


Off The Fucking Rails

by oracular_vernacular



Series: Here We Fucking Go [1]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ...finally, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Kylo Ren, Bipolar Disorder, Childhood Trauma, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Friends to Lovers, Height Differences, Hospitals, Humor, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm literally still writing this instead of sleeping, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Paranoia, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Psychosis, Queer Themes, SI/OC is Non-Binary, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, Smut, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Unresolved Sexual Tension, canon machine broke, holy shit it's such a slow burn y'all, kind of, maybe it's the Force, maybe they're crazy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2020-12-14 01:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 86
Words: 333,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21007778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oracular_vernacular/pseuds/oracular_vernacular
Summary: Okay, I’m gonna try and tell y'all this story right.I'm bipolar. What am I supposed to think when I wake up in a medical bay on the Supremacy, and everyone thinks I’m incredibly strong with the Force? Like, either I am in the self-insert fanfiction of my dreams, or I’m having the best manic episode I’ve ever had in my life.Yeah. It didn't really work out like that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is meant to be a “self-insert” fanfic like no other. my only premise was to take a bunch of the Kylo fic tropes and just turn them inside out. SI is both like me, and also not like me at all. it might be crack, i honestly don’t know anymore, probably at least half crack? it will involve pandemonium, adorableness, humor, gender identity questioning, emotional turmoil, psychosis, political intrigue, character arcs, poor decision making, and romance. and possibly sex! it might even turn out to be good, if i’m not careful. to quote Starlord, “i’m gonna make some weird shit!” 
> 
> feel free to let me know what you think! :)

When I opened my eyes for the first time on board the _ Supremacy_, I genuinely thought I was just back in the hospital again. I was staring up at a sterile white ceiling, could not remember for the life of me how I got there, and it _ smelled _ like a hospital. There was even something close to my head that was beeping like a heart monitor.

The first thing that was off, though, was that I wasn’t wearing a patient ID bracelet. The second thing was my clothing, which was definitely not a shitty hospital gown, or the shabby sweats that my mom usually brought me. No socks with grips on the bottom that are always two sizes too big, either. Just a plain set of black pants and a black shirt with long sleeves. Way too chic for psych ward duds.

Before I could deduce further, it became even more possible that I was not in the hospital because a robot sauntered up to me and started talking.

“Oh, you are awake. That is good. How do you feel?” it asked, in a tinny little voice that, to its credit, only sounded slightly programmed. 

“What?” was all I said at first. I’ve hallucinated before, and sometimes I even know what I’m seeing isn’t real. But the weird feeling in my gut that I get when that happens, the strange uncanny quality of those things like they’re superimposed over my reality, was missing. The more I looked around, the more I realized that everything was way too shiny, too white, too smooth to be the hospital in Lancaster. It looked like a fucking Mac store.

“I said, how do you feel?” the robot repeated obligingly.

“Um, fine, I think,” I muttered as I sat up and tried to look at everything around me all at once. “Where the fuck am I? Is this the Los Angeles hospital? This is totally not in-network for my insurance.” I was hanging onto that whole reality thread real hard, which is also not typical of an episode.

“You are in the medical bay aboard the First Order flagship _ Supremacy_. I am a medical droid, designation M-47777.”

Yeah, I wasn’t buying it, either.

“Oh, that’s pretty funny. This is a new one. Star Wars, huh?” This is how I generally talk to myself about my hallucinations while they’re happening. I try not to talk _ to _ the hallucinations. That only encourages them.

“The _ Supremacy _ is a mega-class star _ dreadnaught_, actually,” the robot- well, the droid- corrected me.

“This isn’t the kind of Star Wars hallucination I’d prefer to have, though, if I’m honest. There’s nothing glamorous going on, I don’t have a light saber,” I rambled to myself. “No sexy outfit, no super hot makeout session with Kylo Ren-”

“Supreme Leader Ren will want to speak with you soon,” the droid interjected. I couldn’t ignore that one.

“Wait, really? Why?” I asked. This might get exciting, after all!

“Because of your medical evaluation. While you were unconscious, we performed a full physical examination. The results indicate that you have a condition that the Supreme Leader feels means that you…” Here, it seemed almost like it was reluctant to say the words. “...are a very powerful Force-sensitive.” 

“Now that’s more like it!” I grinned. Hell yeah, this is what being crazy is all about! Immediately, I started thinking of all the shit I’d totally do if the Force worked. Even if it was a hallucination, it wasn’t going away, so might as well have fun, right? 

“There is no medical evaluation that conclusively indicates these abilities,” the droid added. “This is the _ belief _ of the Supreme Leader.”

“What, you don’t think the Force is real, nurse robot?” I asked it.

“I have no opinion,” it replied flatly. 

“Do I have a whole bunch of midichlorians? Is my power level over 9000?” I was making myself laugh, at least.

“Midichlorians are a myth.” 

“Sure, sure,” I replied, but to be honest I was staring at the droid and trying to make it float. I didn’t like the prequels, anyway. 

“I need to perform a full mental evaluation before I can report to the Supreme Leader,” said the droid. “May I have your name?” My very first impulse was to just make something up, to lie about my name, because that’s always my first impulse at hospitals. Don't ask. I decided to go with it, given the circumstances.

“Aeon Flux,” is what I chose. I thought it was pretty funny.

Then the droid launched into a lot of questions, but they weren’t the usual ones about how many days out of the past thirty you’d felt hopeless, or something. I told it I was born in Greenville, South Carolina but had moved with my parents to Lancaster, California when I was 7 years old. When it asked me what planet that was on, I said Earth. Even the poor droid couldn’t hide that it was totally confused about those answers, but recorded them anyway. I decided I was hallucinating a self-insert fanfiction at that point, so I’d already started thinking about what parts of the plot I was going to try to fuck with. While I rattled off the familiar list of schools I’d dropped out of and jobs I’d lost to the befuddled droid, I wondered if I looked hotter now, or something. That was how fanfics worked, right? Or maybe it didn’t matter and Kylo Ren would be hella into me anyway. The droid and I did basic cognitive exercises that I breezed through, and a handful of logic puzzles, memory drills, a bunch of shit I haven’t been tested for since I was in grade school. Just when I thought the test was finally over, it started asking me weirder stuff- about responding to interpersonal situations, authority, shit like that. I thought it would never fucking end. My stomach started to growl.

“Thank you, Aeon Flux,” it said finally. “Would you like to hear your results?” 

“Sure.” I waited to hear a litany of amazing, fanfic-like qualities about myself.

“Aeon Flux. Height 160.02 centimeters, bodyweight 58.9--” 

“I don’t need the basics,” I cut him off as soon as he started saying my weight. Let’s just say I don’t look at the scale at the doctor’s office for a reason. I was grateful not to know the conversion rate between kilograms and pounds.

“Of course. You have scored above average in abstract reasoning, oral and written communication in Basic, pattern recognition, emotional intelligence, and adaptive learning. You have an average score in critical analysis, logical reasoning, creative problem-solving, metacognition, and short-term visual memory. You have below average scores in numerical reasoning, organization, all remaining areas of memory, cognitive focus, and compliance.” I frowned. All of that seemed disappointingly accurate.

“Any good news?” I joked.

“I do not underst-”

“It’s okay, nevermind. You can go get Kylo Ren now,” I told the droid. I was tired of the boring part of this hallucination.

“I will inform the Supreme Leader of your status.” It seemed a little annoyed as it lumbered away.

“Wait, can I have something to eat?” I called after it. “Please?” The droid stopped in its tracks, and didn’t turn around.

“I can bring a ration in just a few moments.”

“Thank you, Nurse Robot.”

“Please do not call me that.”

“Okay, Lucky Sevens.” I swear to God I heard it sigh in frustration before it started walking away again. I tried not to giggle.

It wasn’t actually all that much later that Kylo Ren showed up. I was eating the ration- which was a rectangular block of chewy stuff that honestly might have been worse than hospital food, if that’s even possible- and the droid reappeared very suddenly.

“Aeon Flux, the Supreme Leader is on his way,” it said. “I advise you do your best not to upset him. He is not a patient man.” The way the droid appeared to be genuinely warning me kind of put me on edge, despite my general conviction that we were most likely going to fall in love immediately and rush off to his quarters to make sweet, sweet love to each other.

“So I’ve heard,” I replied. I was gonna play it cool, though. “Thank you, Lucky Sevens.”

I think I heard the stomping before he even entered the medical bay. I definitely heard it once he entered, and then I heard the shuffling of a bunch of other feet, too. My heart was in my throat, I won’t lie. Was he really gonna be as hot as Adam Driver?

When he rounded the corner into my little alcove with literally like six other people in uniforms behind him, I froze completely. He walked right up to my bed, standing not five feet away. He was really, really freaking tall, and absolutely as hot as Adam Driver. But his entire aura was fucking _ terrifying_. It was like I was being stared at by a wolf who was just waiting for the right moment to rip out my throat. He wasn’t wearing the cape or the mask or anything, and somewhere in the back of my head I realized that I was in the part of plot that came after he’d busted the mask and murdered Snoke. Which immediately triggered another realization. _ Holy fucking shit. The next movie hasn’t even come out yet! I don’t know what happens next! What the fuck!! Worst self-insert ever!! _But at that point my brain froze too, because I was staring into his eyes. They were so intense that it might have been really hot, if he hadn’t also been giving the strong impression that he’d kill me at the drop of a hat. 

The medical droid was beside me, and gave a weird little mechanical cough. I realized how long me and Kylo had been silently staring each other down. I also realized I was probably supposed to talk first, but no words came except Poe’s response to the same problem in Episode VII, and I wasn’t about to go there.

“Aeon Flux, this is Supreme Leader Kylo Ren,” the droid offered, like an awkward introduction at a dinner party. Its head gave a tiny little nod in his direction.

“Uh,” I replied. I know, I’m charming. “Hi. I’m… Aeon.”

“Why were you on board the command shuttle when we found you?” Kylo asked, blunt as I probably should have expected.

“I honest to God do not remember,” I told him, which was completely true. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Like, the last thing I remember is passing out on my bed in my own damn house, holding my guitar.”

“Your what?” He narrowed his eyes, which made him scarier.

“Guitar,” I repeated. “It’s an instrument,” I added quickly.

“An instrument of what?”

“Um, music. It makes music.” The part of my brain that still firmly believed this was a fanfic hallucination suddenly wished I had my guitar. That would melt his angry exterior and make him fall in love with me, right? Or at least it would make me feel better.

“I see.” He was looking at me very curiously. I didn’t look away from his eyes. Always gotta show them you’re not scared, at the hospital.

“The results of the testing indicate an inconsistent memory, Supreme Leader. She is not lying,” piped up the droid. I felt intense gratitude at that moment for its assistance, despite the ‘she’ pronoun. Fuck. Being non-binary in space was not a struggle I had anticipated. I would have to address that later. “The neural scanning combined with test results indicate that there is a severe state of electrical fluctuation in her brain, and wave-particle activity is extremely heightened. This can and often does result in memory loss, as well as delusional beliefs and impaired cognitive function.” Finally, words I was used to hearing in medical settings.

“Who trained you?” Kylo asked me.

“I don’t remember,” I said again. I was playing along with the meta-plot thing. If they thought I had Force powers, I might need to not totally make it obvious that I actually didn’t right off the bat. “If I got trained I don’t remember. Not Luke Skywalker, that’s for sure.” Now, he seemed angry.

“You _ must _ be trained!” he growled, and he held up a hand. I flinched, fully expecting him to hit me, but he just held it there in midair and I realized that he was trying to use the Force on me. But nothing was happening. The air was incredibly tense, all the officers behind him were staring at me as if they expected me to rise up off the ground and start choking. Kylo himself looked increasingly pissed off that I wasn’t doing exactly that. “How else could you resist?” he muttered.

I looked at the medical droid, who gave the tiniest shrug, then at the officers, then smugly back at Kylo Ren. It took me until after the fact, of course, to realize that this wasn’t working because I was not actually part of the universe. I was self-inserted from somewhere else, where the Force didn’t exist. At the time I just thought I was hot shit.

“Maybe you’re just going about it the wrong way. Maybe I got trained to resist attack, and some other more subtle method might work better. Sir.” I added the last part because I wasn’t actually trying to piss him off. I wondered if my implication that he should try being… nice… to me was too heavy-handed. “I don’t remember, so it’s just an idea.” He growled at me and lowered his hand. 

“So it seems,” he said.

“Am I a prisoner?” I asked him bluntly.

“Should you be?” was his reply. Touche, hottie.

“I don’t think so. I’m mostly harmless.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Does everyone know how bad you wanted to make out with Rey in that elevator, before she made her grand exit _ all by herself_?” I asked him tartly, raising an eyebrow at the last bit. I should probably have kept that one to myself, but I was getting annoyed at the lack of making out going on. Kylo got real stiff, and glared at me. Okay, making him think I could look into his mind and was just keeping his secret out of the kindness of my heart was a good flex. There was another long, quiet moment. “Listen. I just want to, um, relearn all this Force stuff that I probably forgot. I keep, uh, seeing things... knowing things, you know, the whole nine yards. Can you help me?” Why had the apprentice angle not occurred to me before?

“No,” Kylo replied. Wait, what?

“Why the hell not?” Like, fuck you, buddy! This is MY fanfiction!

“I am the Supreme Leader. I don’t have time.”

“You also don’t have an apprentice, since Rey blew you off. Twice,” I pointed out. The officers behind him were whispering to one another, but a glare from him shut them up real fast. “If I can’t get it together, then you can kick me out of the program. That seems fair. But I think I got this.” For a minute, he just looked at me.

“Fine, but your compliance scores leave something to be desired. You might want to work on that.” And just like that, the motherfucker turned around and walked out of the medical bay, his gaggle of subordinates trailing behind him. I put my hands on my hips.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked nobody in particular.

“You are very lucky you are not dead,” the droid pointed out. “I think the only reason that you are not, is because Supreme Leader thinks you might be stronger with the Force than he is.”

“This is starting to feel more like a hallucination than a fanfic,” I complained.

“What is supposed to be the difference?” It looked at me and I could almost see the exasperation on its metal face. 

“Hallucinations are out of my control, usually.” I folded my arms and looked down at my lap, the full weight of that sentence only hitting me after I said it. I looked at the remains of my ration, far from hungry. The droid was silent for a moment. 

“I will see about getting you your own quarters and some clothes. The ones you were wearing when they found you were not very presentable.” I guess I had been wearing my pajamas. Which are a pair of underwear and a t-shirt with holes in it, but it was a little late to be embarrassed about that. The droid rumbled away to its station, full of blinking lights and screens. “Oh yes,” it said suddenly, as though remembering something. “I think you can have this back.” 

When I looked up, the droid was handing me my guitar. I took it, completely puzzled but comforted nonetheless.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh. Canon machine broke.

My quarters was nothing to write home about. Just a little room with a little couch and a low table, a little bed, a little closet built into the wall, and a tiny bathroom. You may notice a theme, here. There was even a little sliver of a window looking out into the crushing void of space. It turned out the clothes I was wearing were storm trooper regulation underclothes, and they provided me with more of those “until something more suitable could be procured.” They did give me some really good boots, though, black leather and sturdy with a steel toe. 

What they didn’t provide was jack diddly shit for me to do, except to return to the medical bay for daily monitoring. Even my meals were brought to me in my room, and though I was technically free to roam around the ship, I frankly was hesitant to do that. How elaborate could one hallucination actually be? So for the entire second day, I played my guitar and sang until my fingers hurt, and tried to figure out how to use the standard datapad that was in my room. 

By the third day, though, I was so profoundly bored that I was ready to get in trouble. Normally in the hospital, they make you talk to a therapist and go to group like every day. They at least have a lounge with a TV, for fuck’s sake. My brain was running itself in circles, and I was starting to get really uncomfortable with how long this whole thing was going on. In my agitation, I wandered to the medical bay way before my scheduled appointment.

“Really Lucky Sevens, I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do around here,” I started saying immediately upon entering the alcove where the droid was standing dutifully at its station doing god-knows-what. “I mean how am I supposed to master the Force with Kylo not even around and also not making out with me, really lowers the incentive yanno, I just, I can’t figure out the little tablet in my room like I dunno if there’s something to read on there or what, but anyway the window is so small and I think if I try to play every song I know on my guitar one more time my fingers are gonna fall off--”

“Aeon Flux, please calm down,” the droid interrupted.

“Literally how? How though, Sevens, I mean this whole hallucination has been fun except it hasn’t, but I am stuck right now and it’s driving me nuts, I don’t even eat in the cafeteria or know where the gym is or if there’s a pool-”

“I can provide you with this information, provided you sit down for a moment and let me run your routine tests.” The droid emerged from his station and started poking buttons on the wall by the little bed. I promptly plopped down and awaited the sound of the scanner beeping behind me.

“It’s either that or a tranquilizer, buddy, because I can’t sleep for shit, and it’s dark outside all the time ‘cuz we’re in fucking space, so, I mean, there’s that, what are you gonna do? Is there a sunlight simulator? Humans need vitamin D, yanno, and me I have a chronic deficiency so that’s not great. Do y’all even scan for vitamins? Do you like plug all the vitamins into the food? ‘Cuz you can’t absorb some of them through the intestinal lining, yanno, it’s not always like that--”

“Aeon Flux. You are in a very unusual state.” The droid was observing whatever its scanner was saying as red and blue lines and dots flickered all around my head.

“Really? You don’t say, I mean I’ve only been hallucinating that I’m in a Star Wars fanfiction for three days, normally the lithium would have kicked in by now--”

“You have highly elevated stress hormones, dopamine levels have been profoundly unstable since you arrived, wave-particle phasing is nearly constant, and electrical activity is synchronizing in bursts.” It looked at me. “You are talking quite a lot, and very fast.” 

“All that shit is happening right now?” I asked it, fascinated. “Can you fix it? Wait, what is wave-particle phasing? THAT sounds crazy. They don’t know about that back on Earth, at least not in brains. Damn I should take some notes, wouldn’t it be wild if I got home and changed the world because of a hallucination? What’s the Nobel Peace Prize but for neuroscience? Fucking cured everybody’s depression and shit with wave-particle phasing, like I’m a goddamn physicist, that’s hilarious. Ask me how I learned and tell ‘em I used the Force. Make their fucking award float, where’s my award for THAT? You know I always wanted--”

“Aeon Flux. How much have you been sleeping since you woke up two days ago?” the droid asked.

“I don’t have any idea, Lucky Sevens, it’s fucking _ space _ outside,” I laughed. “Like, maybe a couple hours?”

“Since you awoke 48 hours ago?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“How do you feel right now?”

“I just need something to do, man. Feel like I got fucking bugs inside my brain, like I wanna chew off my own foot, and I might have thrown the tablet in my room once. Twice. It was getting on my nerves, okay? It kept shutting itself off, or something, I don’t know. I thought about throwing it at the window to find out if it really is space out there--”

“Even if you could breach the window material, why would you _ want _ to do that?” It seemed baffled. “You are an organic life form. If you breach the hull of the ship, you will die.”

“I was just curious!”

“Do you always struggle with this casual lack of self-preservation?” 

“Only when I’m manic!” I laughed- and then I realized what I’d said. “Oh. Fuck. Fucking shit fuck balls holy fucking shit. Fuck. Oh my God.” About a million distinct thoughts all ran through my brain at once, which is something that’s difficult to fathom if you’ve never actually experienced it before. But the one that kept repeating itself was, _ Holy shit what if you really are on the Supremacy what if this isn’t a hallucination what if this is really fucking happening and you were stable when you got here and now you haven’t been taking your meds for three days??????? _

“Aeon Flux, you have been silent for thirty seconds. Are you alright?” the droid inquired, seeming more legitimately concerned than it had since I arrived. 

“No,” I replied, staring at the wall for a moment.

“What is the matter?”

“Am I really here? Is this real?” I looked at the droid’s vaguely human face, desperate to hear that I was in LA Hospital, that I was the same kind of batshit crazy as always, and everything would be fine once the lithium kicked in.

“Are you asking if you are really in the medical bay of the First Order flagship _ Supremacy_, in the year 35 ABY?” It stared blankly at me. How do you know if a droid is trolling you?

“Yes, I am asking that.”

“You are really here, in the medical bay of--”

“Okay, Lucky. I get it. Thank you.” I looked down at my boots. I could feel the impending cliff of the drop, the perilous fall from one state to another. I knew that feeling so well, had written so much shitty poetry about it, but hadn’t felt it like this in years. _ What if you are stuck here? What if you are trapped here? What if you can’t go home? This is not fun anymore. _I heard the droid pressing buttons behind me.

“You do not seem well, Aeon Flux. Your stress hormone levels are dropping very quickly. Wave-particle fluctuation is now unstable. I recommend that you stay here tonight, so that I can monitor you.”

“Yeah.” My brain still felt like it was buzzing, but now the thoughts were all clumping together and turning into mush. Terrified mush. I didn’t move.

“Let me go and find bed dressing for you,” the droid suggested. “And perhaps something to read?” 

“Read?” I perked up, just a little. “Yeah, thanks.” I like to think the droid would have offered me a little smile then, if its face could move.

\-----

Thirty-six hours after that, I was in full blown depression. Without getting into the details, my bipolar is the rapid-cycling type. Sometimes it’s REALLY rapid. Stress triggers those cycles, and changes within the cycles sometimes too.

This had gone from kind of funny and weird to extremely fucking stressful in short order. 

I was lying on the hospital bed under a gray blanket, with the godawful white light of the medical bay having been mercifully dimmed in my alcove. Lucky Sevens had brought me a little tablet that had a bunch of history books on it, totally unaware that I was a huge nerd from a non-Star-Wars dimension who already knew mostly everything in the damn book already. It was laying on the little bedside table the droid had pulled out of the wall for me. Every time I looked at it, I felt guilty for not reading it. I felt guilty for everything, to be honest. For being crazy in the first place, for lying about what I knew, for random shitty things I’d done a long time ago. Depression is like that. I was guilty, and terrified, and trapped, and totally fucking screwed, in turns. Kylo Ren hadn’t even talked to me since the first day, and he was acting exactly like he did in the movies- like an asshole. _ Fuck that guy, _ I thought for the tenth time that day. 

Then, things took an unexpected turn.

So they have clocks in Star Wars, turns out, but time feels like a sham in space when the ship is active at all times and the personnel have to regulate their own schedules. The clock on my wall said 2200. I was just staring at it, lost in sludgy awfulness, when the little beep that signaled that someone was requesting to enter my alcove rang. I looked over at the corner where the wall ended, and there was a figure who was kind of backlit by the light in the rest of the medical bay.

“Hello?” I asked impassively.

“Aeon?” came a voice, and it sounded just like Kylo Ren. Except it also sounded a little timid, which was not very Kylo-Ren-like. “Can I come in?” 

“Yes?” I replied, confused. Why would the Supreme Asshole _ ask _ before entering my not-even-a-room at the hospital? The figure moved towards me, not stomping at all, and pulled a little stool on wheels out from under the foot of my bed. When he sat down on it, and more light fell on his face from around the corner, my mouth fell open.

_Is that… Matt the Radar Technician?_

“I heard you weren’t doing so well,” he said. “I thought I might come by to check in.” His hair wasn’t the goofy blonde wig from the SNL skit, it was just Kylo Ren’s hair but blonde. He did have some big glasses on. More than that, though, his mannerisms were totally different from Kylo Ren’s. He was quiet, slouched a little as though he was embarrassed about how tall he was, his eyes were softer, and he was dressed in a gray jumpsuit. The orange utility vest was missing, of course. 

“Oh. Uh, thank you,” I stuttered. “Is… is your name Matt?” For a moment, he looked surprised.

“Wow. You really are strong with the Force. I mean, my full name is Mattau Anto, but my friends call me Matt. At least they would, if I had any friends.” He gave a little half-smile.

I was totally, completely, utterly confused. He wasn’t acting like he was just a blonde Kylo, even though he looked just like a blonde Kylo. If it was just Kylo, wouldn’t he whisper something about how he just acted like an asshole to keep the subordinates in-line, and this blossoming friendship/romance was our little secret? He also wasn’t acting like the ridiculous SNL skit Matt, of course. I started to wonder why I was still thinking anything around me was going to play out like a fanfiction would. Or even like the canon, apparently.

“How… how did you find out about me?” I tested the waters.

“Everyone knows about you, silly. You’re the most interesting news that’s happened since old man Snoke bit the big one,” he giggled. I swear he had an almost feminine energy, like he was just a lonely girl in the psych ward who had elected to befriend me. It was extremely endearing.

“Oh. Well, don’t feel bad, Matt. I don’t have any friends either.”

“Nobody expects you to, hun. _ You _ don’t even know how you got here,” he reassured me, patting the edge of the bed. 

“What do you do on the ship, Matt?” I asked. Something to do with radar, perhaps? 

“I’m an Energy Field And Detection Systems Specialist,” he answered with a smile. So basically... “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. I just… it’s nothing. Do you like that job?”

“Well enough,” he replied with a shrug. “It’s quiet, down in the technical levels. I like that about it. Don’t have to think too hard. What about you?”

“I… it’s a long story. I’ve had a lot of jobs. Never kept them for long.” 

“Why not?”

“Um…” I wondered if this really was Kylo, playing me for more information. I wondered if it was even real. It’s not easy to tell what’s paranoid and what’s a hallucination when you’re in a fucking fictional universe. “My mind is… different from most people’s. It makes doing shit like working or going to school really hard for me.”

“Believe it or not, even if it’s not the same problem, I know exactly how you feel,” Matt told me, smiling softly. He was fucking adorable. 

“Yeah?” I said, fidgeting with the edge of the blanket I was curled under. “I’ve been trying to decide if this place is even real for five days, now.”

“Any luck?” he asked. Was he _ joking _ with me about being crazy?

“Um… no, actually. None at all. I feel…” My eyes started to water, which was embarrassing, but there was no stopping it. Nevermind that I was actually filled with crushing despair, and had every reason to be upset. “I feel trapped. Like I don’t know if I’m just in my own brain, or if I’m physically somewhere I wasn’t trying to be. I don’t know what’s real anymore, and I just want to go home.” I curled up into a tighter ball, looking away from Matt in my shame, shutting my eyes. After a moment, though, I heard him shift and felt his big hand swipe a thumb across my cheek, gently wiping away a tear trail. It was so nice for someone- even a non-canon character- to be kind to me, that I couldn’t even question it anymore. I looked back up at him as he leaned over me, one elbow on his knee. He was enormous.

“So what if it’s real or not, you know?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not going away, is it?” I shook my head. It most certainly wasn’t. “So, here you are. Maybe one day you’ll wake up back home, just like you woke up here. Who knows. But while you’re here, might as well, you know. _ Be _ here.” I blinked at him for a moment. He made it sound so simple. My depressive mind was railing against the idea of acceptance- literally every other phase of grief was roaring, active, stuffing miserable thoughts into my brain. But at the same time, with him there treating me like a person, I felt… better. Funny how that works.

“I don’t know how to be here,” I confessed. “I’ve never been here before. In this place. Mentally, and physically for all I know.”

“Yeah, they said you couldn’t remember much, and everything you talked about in your evaluation was… well. It’s okay. Just start over fresh, fuck it.” He leaned back into a proper sitting position on the stool, spinning from side to side a little. 

“I’m supposed to be getting trained to use the Force,” I told him, very quietly. I still wasn’t sure if I could trust him, but there was only one way to find out.

“Ooooh, by the Supreme Leader?” He jokingly batted his eyelashes. “Very fancy. You’re much more important than I am. I just scrub the floors. You sure you wanna hang out with me?” I looked at him, trying to put the puzzle together. Was he just a separate person from Kylo? Triplet-fic style?

“You’re the only person on this ship who’s been nice to me, or even talked to me, so. Yes. I would love to hang out with you,” I replied. Fuck it, right?

“_There’s _ a little smile,” he cooed, grinning, pointing at my face. “I saw it. You can’t take it back now.” I blushed, but his teasing just made me smile more. I pulled the edge of my blanket up around my face. _What the fuck! Why is Matt so cute and nice??_

“Can you show me around?” I asked him shyly. 

“Sure thing, hun. But not until tomorrow, after-hours. I gotta head out, now.”

“When’s that?”

“1900 hours! You wanna meet me down on T3 aft?” I stared at him like he’d just spoken French. No, scratch that, I remembered at least a little French from high school. More like Russian. 

“What?” I asked hopelessly. He laughed.

“I”m sorry. You really don’t know your way around the ship at all, do you?”

“Absolutely not even a little bit,” I admitted, shaking my head. “And this is a fucking _ enormous _ ship.” 

“Okay. I’ll come get you from here. Bring your datapad, we’ll get the map up and running on it.”

“Um… will you show me how to work the datapad tomorrow, too? Mine keeps turning itself off.” His smile was full of affectionate exasperation.

“I have my work cut out for me, don’t I?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S MATT! watch out, he gets cuter!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get so fluffy you'd think I took a hair dryer to this fic.

When Matt came to get me in my alcove, I had been waiting for that moment basically all day. When he pressed the chime my face lit up. 

“Hi!” I said, springing out of bed and rounding the corner. In the vivid light of the rest of the medical bay, Matt really did look just like a slouchy blonde Kylo with glasses in a gray jumpsuit. His pale skin was dotted with moles and I think the blonde hair actually made his complexion look more flushed and rosy, which really just compounded his cuteness. 

“Oh wow! You’re really smiling today!” he commented with a sweet, slightly goofy grin.

“Well, I had something to look forward to,” I said with a shrug. He laughed shyly and flushed a little, and I thought I was gonna loose my goddamn mind.

“I’m sorry I didn’t plan something more exciting, now,” he lamented as we turned to walk out of the medical bay. I scanned around to make sure Lucky Sevens wasn’t there to get mad at me for leaving this late.

“The only thing on my schedule has been brain scans. Anything would be exciting at this point.” 

“Are you feeling better today?”

“Yeah, kind of. It’s hard to tell. Sometimes I feel great but my brain actually isn’t doing so hot. Don’t think I’m there yet, today, since I slept most of the day, but still.”

“That… sounds like a nightmare. How do you know when you’re just feeling better or when you’re actually better?”

“I don’t,” I replied honestly. “Not until I do something… I dunno. Crazy, or stupid, or both.”

“Oh no. Can I do anything to help?” He sounded like me if I was talking to someone who was in a bad way. I’m a caretaker type, and I was starting to think that Matt was, too.

“Just… let me know if I start talking a lot, and really fast.”

“Okay, I can do that,” he agreed cheerfully. We walked through pretty empty hallways that all looked exactly the same to me, while Matt did mysterious things to my datapad.

“Oh, it wasn’t calibrated! That’s why it was shutting down. Wow, I was overthinking it. Makes sense, in retrospect. I can set it up for you,” he informed me, tapping away at the screen. I watched him, fascinated, as he showed me the most basic of basic things about how to use it. It reminded me of an iPad a lot more than I expected, but the screen was mostly black with red or white text and conspicuously lacking in annoying advertisements. By the time we arrived at a part of the ship that didn’t look exactly like every other part, I was entirely lost. Matt was loading up the map.

“So, we are currently at the entrance to the technical levels, where I work. I thought we would start here, because it’s really quiet, and they span the entire bottom quarter of the ship. So, anywhere we go, we will be directly under other parts of the ship you’ll want to know about. If you can remember the layout down here, you can find your way pretty much anywhere else in the ship, except for a couple one-off places like the command level.” He pointed to the map on the datapad, which was now showing a layout that resembled the foyer we were in, including the doors directly in front of us and a dot which obviously represented the datapad.

“Oh, like a GPS!” I replied. Matt’s smile was still on his face, but he was clearly confused as to what I meant. “It’s, don’t worry, it’s another... thing. Back home stuff.”

“Ah. Okay, so you need an ID badge with clearance to get in here,” he told me, pulling a card out of his pocket that did not resemble the silly one from the skit at all. “I… may or may not have made you a copy of one.” Suddenly his hand moved, and pulled a second ID card out from behind the first one with a huge grin. My eyes flew wide open.

“Can you do that? Are you gonna get in trouble?”

“Only if you do something really, really stupid. But this ship isn’t delicate. Even if you somehow accidentally damaged one of the accessible parts, it would be contained and repaired before anything terrible happened. That said, please don’t do something stupid if you can help it,” he implored me.

“What if I can’t help it?” I asked nervously. Mania does crazy things, literally.

“Just beep me from the datapad. I’ll do whatever I can to help, I promise.”

“Thank you. I promise I will try not to do anything stupid, too.” He held the card out to me, and gestured towards the door. I took it and approached the door, holding the card up to a blinking red light on the console. It slid open with that iconic sound, and I looked back at Matt and grinned like a five-year-old before we walked in.

They were darker than the upstairs halls, with lights that ran along the tunnel wall at waist level pointing down over seams in the metal. I assumed that beneath the seams were access points to the innards of the ship where the ‘specialists’ could get in to do maintenance and repairs. It _ was _ quiet, and I could see why he liked it down here.

“It’s off-hours, so there might be next to nobody down here. There’s a guard station every five kilometers, but we’re very far away from the only places where anyone can enter or exit the ship, so it’s not easy to get down here before a lot more security shows up.” 

“Five kilometers? Jesus,” I exclaimed. I knew that this was a big ship, like the size of a city, but damn. Being inside it was overwhelming.

“There’s a reason it’s the headquarters, hun,” he replied, chuckling. “Here, come with me. I can show you the waystation I eat lunch at. Riveting, I know.”

“I’m fascinated,” I assured him, watching the dot move along on the datapad as we walked. The whole venture was pretty much exactly the right combination of excitement and calm that I needed. Plus, I would have listened to Matt talk about the exact size of every screw in the hull of the ship, to be honest. For hours.

“There are, at most, 495 floors above us. Less in most places, much less in some places like under the engines.”

“That is a _ large _ number,” I noted, only slightly horrified. 

“Don’t let it get to ya, it’s not so bad. A lot of them are barracks, and places you’ll probably never need to go, and places you’re probably not even allowed to go. Most of the floors are smaller than these anyway. Right now, though, we’re under the pool,” he said, wagging an eyebrow.

“There _ is _ a pool!” I exclaimed. “I fucking knew it.”

“I should say the pools, plural. They’re training pools, not recreational. For the troopers and anyone else who wants to do cardio that’s easy on the joints. Joints don’t love artificial gravity. Though, I heard sometimes the troops take the lanes off and play water grav-ball after hours,” he whispered conspiratorially. God everything he did made me want to explode, he was so precious.

“Seems reasonable.” I said. 

“There are also soaking tubs, for salt baths. It’s hard to get all the minerals into molecular reprocessor food.”

“Wow. This is way nicer than I expected. The storm troopers seem pretty well taken care of.”

“Did you think the First Order treated everyone like slaves?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell how serious he was being.

“I think that’s just your reputation, is all. The First Order treats a lot of people like slaves,” I replied, and I didn’t voice as much vitriol as I felt, suddenly. But if this was real, that meant that the suffering depicted in the movies and shows was also real. Matt looked away, seeming more disquieted than upset or angry.

“There are a lot of people who run this place. Not all of them see eye-to-eye, but all of them control enough firepower to make certain... choices,” he said carefully.

“Do you think the new Supreme Leader will put a stop to that?” I asked him, sincerely. I really was juggling the risk that he was Kylo incognito, so I tried to do so subtly.

“I don’t know. It’s complicated, I imagine. But I sort of doubt it,” he replied, frowning. Well damn, _that _ was interesting. But by then we had arrived at another set of doors. Matt waved his card, and they opened. Inside, there were rows of tables with chairs and along the back wall was a series of cubby-like openings.

“They look like replicators,” I muttered, unable to keep Star Trek from filtering into my mind. Yeah yeah, wrong Star-thing, I know. But I wasn’t one of those nerds who chose a side.

“They’re just dispensers for the reprocessed food. Sometimes there’s real food, when we get a shipment of something in. The senior officers get first pick of the spoils, obviously. But there’s always something for us peons, even if it’s just a Jogan fruit.” Matt was heading to the left wall, where a larger opening with a stack of clear plastic cups was sunk into the wall. “You want something to drink?”

“What are my options?” I asked, sitting down at the end of one of the tables.

“Um, water, Aitha protien, fizzpop, we have Jogan juice right now … I guess it’s a little late for stim tea.” He shrugged.

“I’ve never had Jogan juice,” I said. I’d never had anything he’d just said except water, of course, but there was no need for anyone to know that!

“Jogan juice it is.” He grabbed two glasses and I watched them fill with a lavender-colored liquid from the dispenser. I couldn’t decide if the color was beautiful, or slightly off-putting for a fruit juice. Then he shuffled over and handed me one, sitting on the opposite side of the table and watching me intently. I sniffed it curiously. It smelled kind of like a pear and a blueberry had a genetically modified baby. I sipped it, and it tasted pretty much exactly like it smelled, with an odd floral finish. 

“What’s the verdict?” Matt asked with puppy-like enthusiasm.

“It’s delicious!” I replied, smiling, because honestly it was. He looked pleased.

“So, have I overwhelmed you with information about how to get around the ship yet?” he asked, taking a sip of his own lavender juice.

“Kind of, honestly,” I admitted, glancing down at the datapad. “But, I feel like I can study the map, and, you know. Baby steps.” I looked back up at him, and he was smiling at me the way you smile at someone who remembers something you said. You know what I mean? I was totally turning pink. _ Dammit _.

“Baby steps, yeah. Though, you might have a lot of steps soon, if you’re being trained to use the Force.” 

“I haven’t heard from the Supreme Asshole since I got here,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes. Then I remembered who I was talking to. “I’m sorry. That was unnecessary. I just… He lives up to his reputation, so far.” 

“I suppose he has to, given his circumstances,” Matt replied, seeming less bothered than I thought he would be. Thank fucking God. “I think he just came back from planetside, though, so maybe you’ll hear from him soon.” 

“That should be interesting.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I took a long drink of my juice. _ Note to self: no more talking shit about Kylo to Matt until I’m sure they’re not the same person. _ There was an awkward moment of silence, which I hate, and compulsively fill up.

“You know, I went on a first date with a guy to a juice bar, once,” I said, which I immediately regretted. But given that I was hanging out with a cute boy and drinking juice, it was the only thing that I could think of.

“Oh really?” Matt asked, blushing. _ Fuck. _ “That’s… what’s a juice bar? Do they just serve a bunch of different kinds of juice?”

“Well, yes, fresh pressed juice. They also serve smoothies, which are just like juice and whole fruit and a bunch of other stuff blended up together. You freeze the fruit before you blend it, so it’s almost like ice cream. But you can drink it with a straw.” Matt looked fascinated. 

“Wow. That’s amazing. They serve that on your planet?”

“Um, yes, in some places.”

“Do people normally go on first dates to juice bars?”

“Well, no, not really,” I laughed. “That made it very memorable, though.”

“Did you two go on another date?” he asked, almost nervously, his mouth working like he was chewing the inside of his lip. His very plush, beautiful lip. _ Stop it, brain. _

“Yeah, actually. We dated for two years.” Suddenly I felt slightly sorry I’d brought it up. “Then… we broke up. That was a long time go. A lot of things were going on for me at that point. Not-great things.”

“I’m sorry, hun. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he assured me, waving a hand. 

“It’s okay. It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t handle everything, but to be fair I couldn’t handle it either. It was for the best. But, proof that a weird first date isn’t always a bad one.” I heard my therapist in my head, commenting on my ability to be optimistic. She said that it was a good thing, but I also used it to avoid shitty feelings, sometimes. Oof. “I used the same tactic on a girl I asked out a couple of years ago. The date went well, but she found out what was going on with my brain and never called me back.” Wow, why was I talking about all this sad shit again? To a perfect and possibly fictional stranger? Who may or may not have also been a bad guy in disguise, and who I had an amazingly inadvisable crush on??

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Matt said, frowning. “I’m sorry that happened.” 

“It is what it is,” I replied. “The point is, dating failures are unrelated to juice.” He laughed, which made me laugh. We glanced at each other, then I glanced away. _ Oh God, just kill me already. _

“You keep asking me about me,” I said finally. “What about you?”

“I don’t talk about myself that much, to be honest. You are much more upfront than I am. I’m working on that, but. It’s just hard when you’ve been through certain things.” He seemed almost apologetic. 

“That’s okay. I understand, really. I just have no filter,” I reassured him quickly. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“I don’t get close to a lot of people, to be honest, Aeon. I… well, I came to find you in the medical bay because I thought you might be as lonely as I am, and because you didn’t know me already like everyone else does. I didn’t know if you’d even want to talk to me, but I thought maybe we could become friends so I took a leap of faith,” he confessed, spinning the half-empty glass of Jogan juice around in his big hands nervously. I looked at him for a moment, kind of shocked. I wanted to jump across the table and hug him.

“You’re already getting better at opening up, Matt,” I pointed out, grinning. He looked up, a self-conscious little smile on his face, and chuckled. “Baby steps!”

“Yeah, baby steps,” he repeated. He finished the rest of his juice in one go. “We can go whenever you want. I can walk you back to the medical bay. But no rush, either.”

“Thank you. We should probably head that way.” I finished my own juice, and went to stand up, but then the room started to spin and my knees became gelatinous. The sound of my cup clattering on the floor happened faintly. I was vaguely aware that I hadn’t hit the ground yet when I heard Matt’s voice, both far away and very close at the same time.

“Aeon! What’s wrong?”

“Shit,” I murmured. Someone was holding me, someone really large and very strong, one arm wrapped around my back and the other on my shoulder, steadying me. I realized through the haze that it was probably Matt. _ Oh, wow. _

“Hang on, you’d better sit,” he said, and he eased me back down into the chair. I made a groan of protest as the warmth of his body disappeared, leaning back into my chair. His hand was still on my shoulder, and he crouched in front of me as he slowly began coming back into focus.

“Withdrawal,” I managed, squeezing my eyes tightly shut for a moment. I felt his other hand on my face, the backs of his fingers on my forehead looking for a fever. They slid down to my cheek, then to the other. I figured there was no reason to tell him that I didn’t get a fever from withdrawal.

“You sure it’s not the Jogan fruit?” he asked, trying to make me laugh. I managed a wan smile.

“Not fruit. Happened before. No meds,” I replied, trying to explain. But words were hard, forming in my brain and struggling to make their way to my mouth. Gotta admit, it felt affirming, if also slightly horrifying, to realize that my hypothesis that I was fine when I got here and had been without medication for five days now was correct.

“They’re not giving you anything?” he asked, abandoning his fever-hunt in favor of rubbing my temple gently. _ Oh my God. Please marry me, _ I thought. _ You are so sweet. You are the nicest person ever. _ I was grateful that I was struggling to blurt out everything that entered my brain, for once.

“No. Was on meds before. None here. Withdrawal.” I felt my head sagging into his big, warm hand. I wanted to sag into his whole big, warm body, curl up with him, get jacked up on the oxytocin. Did I mention it’s been three years since I got laid? “It’ll pass, just a bit.”

“This is the First Order flagship, hun, they have every medication in the galaxy, I’m pretty sure. You should get back on yours, if this is what’s gonna happen.” His voice had taken on a slightly stern, concerned tone that I recognized. The voice of a mom-friend, basically. I couldn’t help but smile, my eyes still shut, just feeling how nice his hand was.

“Doubt you have here. I’ll ask Lucky,” I told him. The spin that was happening even behind my eyelids started to slow, finally. “Sooo woozy.”

“Let’s get you back to the medical bay, wobbles,” he teased me, and before I could reply I felt hands around my back and under my knees. Then I was lifted up into the air, up against a broad, warm chest, and I gasped, opening my eyes in time to watch the room spin and then the side of Matt’s face swim into view. I instinctively locked my arms around his neck, of course.

“Oh,” I exhaled, staring out at the room from this new vantage, but still unable to focus on any one object. “Wow.”

“Not gonna lie, I’m glad we didn’t get too deep into the technical levels. You’re not _ that _ heavy, but it’s the walking at the same time that’s the fun part,” he said to me, beginning to take measured steps toward the exit. I had no idea exactly how heavy I was, as I’ve mentioned before, but I knew I wasn’t tiny. And I’m not always into feeling small and helpless. Actually I’m almost never into it. But with someone as gentle as Matt, it was kind of exhilarating.

“Anyone ever tell you, you’re the nicest human being in the galaxy?” I asked him. I couldn’t help but tell him that, at least, even if I knew better than to propose on the spot. 

“Absolutely nobody,” he laughed. We moved at an easy pace out into the hall and started back the way we’d come from.

“Dunno why not, but you are,” I confirmed. “Sorry though, ‘bout falling out on you.” 

“Don’t you dare apologize. It’s not like you meant to. Plus, this is a good excuse for me to focus,” he said, and I could tell that even as he bantered with me a bit, he was paying a lot of attention to his steps, to the muscles that were carrying my weight, and even to where his arms were holding me, trying not to make me uncomfortable. They say that those of us with certain brain troubles are also very sensitive to the energies of other people. Whether or not that’s because of the troubles themselves, or because of how other people react to them, I have my own thoughts. But I was reading him loud and clear, I felt sure, and everything about him was compassion and tenderness and worry. A gentle giant, pretty much. Like, more than a foot taller than me. Undeniably huge. I found the combination stunningly attractive. I sighed, resting my head on his shoulder, simultaneously savoring being in his arms and lamenting the fact that I was still fairly certain that falling in love with him was a bad idea. This wasn’t a fanfiction, after all. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked, as we exited the technical levels and entered a lift back to the medical bay floor. I could feel the reverberations of his soothing, deep voice through his collar bone beneath the gray fabric of his jumpsuit.

“Less woozy. Very cozy, though,” I replied.

“Well, that’s good,” he chuckled. I waited for him to ask me if I could walk yet, to want to put me down, but he didn’t. 

“Thank you for fixing my datapad, and showing me around. And giving me juice. And carrying me around like a sack of grain.” We were both chuckling.

“Thank you for your time, and your honesty,” he replied. That struck me, for some reason. Just when I thought my heart couldn’t possibly melt any further. _ I am not supposed to fall in love with you, dammit. _ We were quiet for the rest of the walk down the more brightly lit hallways, but it was late enough now that they were mostly empty.

“Ding ding ding,” he said as we approached the glass medical bay doors. “This is your stop.” Once again I expected him to put me down, but he just continued carrying me along the rows of alcoves until we reached the end of the one where my dark little nook was. He walked right up to the bed, and finally stopped. “Easy does it,” he cautioned, and slowly began to lower me onto the cot. I was so incredibly loathe to leave his arms, but it had to happen eventually. I pushed thoughts out of my mind about how getting excited about Matt, sans medication, could shoot me right into mania very easily. As long as we didn’t have sex, I probably stood a chance of not getting _ too _ crazy. Yes, sex can make me manic. Being bipolar is _ super _ fun.

“Oops,” I said as I got unsteady again, once I was sitting on the bed. His hand remained behind my back, supportively. I put my hands on either side of me, propping myself up. “Still woozy. Time to lie down.” I felt his giant palm guide me back into a horizontal position. Once my head hit the pillow, I immediately felt less dizzy. “This is better.”

“You promise me you’ll ask about those medicines you need?” he asked me pointedly.

“Okay, okay, I promise. I will.” I batted at his arm with my hand drowsily. He caught my hand in his, and squeezed it. _ Ohmigod_.

“Thank you.”

“When will I see you again?” I asked timidly.

“Not sure. I have a lot of work to do coming up. But I’ll find you soon.”

“Promise?”

“We’re making a lot of promises today, huh?” he asked, grinning. I just looked at him reproachfully. “Yes. I promise.” I smiled.

“Okay.”

“Goodnight, Aeon,” he said softly, releasing my hand.

“‘Night, Matt,” I replied, and he was gone. In the quiet of the medical bay, all I could hear was my heart pounding in my ears. Once again, an incredibly rapid river of thoughts was running through my brain.

_ Oh my GOD, he is SO CUTE. He is so strong and so nice. What am I gonna do? Fuck I’m actually in withdrawal, this could suck really badly. Like, really fucking badly. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it, hope the state-of-the-art Star Wars medical care can keep me from dying. I probably won’t die. Fuuuck I like Matt so much. SO MUCH. This sucks. This is horrible. Is he Kylo? Is he just putting me on? Fuck. What if he’s just Kylo trying to fuck with me? What if he’s manipulating the shit out of me to get me to fall for him so he can control me later? Okay, that might be the trauma talking. But still, how do I know? This is so not canon compliant. When the fuck is Kylo going to show back up?? When do I get to see Matt again?? Is he like Kylo’s twin brother? His clone? His light-side doppelganger? This is fucked up. This is so incredibly fucked up_.

They carried on like that, bouncing between adoration and paranoia for I know not how long, until I finally passed out.

\-----

When Lucky Sevens woke me up the next morning, it seemed a little grouchier than usual.

“It is morning, Aeon Flux. How did you sleep?” it asked.

“Not much,” I replied, slightly grouchy myself. Was it earlier than I usually got up? Didn’t matter, I wasn’t gonna be able to go back to sleep now. The endless stream of thoughts in my brain about Matt resumed almost as soon as I became conscious.

“Perhaps you should not stay out so late,” the droid chided me.

“Technically, I can do what I want, Lucky,” I reminded it, pouting. “How do you know what I do at night? Are you spying on me?” Great, more paranoid thoughts. Being spied on was a classic one, and in this place I had no reason to _ not _ think there were cameras everywhere. It was a fucking space ship.

“You have slept in your shoes, Aeon Flux. Or is that customary on your planet?” I looked down at my feet, and sure enough, the boots were sticking out from under the blanket. I frowned.

“For your information, I’m learning how to get around the ship. I got my datapad set up and everything,” I retorted.

“Well, that is very good for you,” it said, and I rolled my eyes but also held back a chuckle. If it had been my mom, I’d be feeling bad, but watching a medical droid act like a fussy parent was kind of cute. For now. “Your scans have mixed results again today. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I replied. “Doing something was good for me. Much less depressed. Lots of thoughts, though.” About Matt. And Matt’s voice. And his big, strong arms. And how he blushed when I said nice things to him.

“I am glad you are feeling better.” Now it sounded like it might have forgiven me for my evening escapades. “I have news for you.”

“Really? What?” I sat up in the bed, looking at the droid expectantly, unable to think of anything I was waiting to hear about except the next time I’d get to hang out with Matt.

“The Supreme Leader would like to begin training with you today.”

Oh. That.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was so cute and fun to write. now i guess it's back to reality T-T


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren Is Not Nice.

Apparently, storm trooper regulation underclothes were not cool enough for me to wear to my first day at Sith-ergarten. Kylo had sent over a pair of black trousers with a cloth belt and a (admittedly rather smart-looking) black shirt with an asymmetrical wrap collar that zipped along the side like a biker jacket. He’d also sent a really nice black coat with long tails, and a little shrug with a hood. Lucky assured me the latter were just for my general wardrobe, in case I was going somewhere cold, and I didn’t need to wear them to meet with the Supreme Asshole. But I kinda wanted to, honestly. They looked really cool. I didn’t exactly have a full-length mirror, or anything, but maybe that was for the best.

He sent one of his underlings to come collect me, since I still didn’t really know my way around the ship at all. She was uncomfortably silent as she marched ahead of me through a maze of hallways, up two different lifts, and to the entrance to… somewhere. She didn’t actually tell me where we were going. I was too worried about the outcome of today’s events to talk incessantly, but the hampster wheel in my brain carried on ad nauseum.

She opened the door, and then stood to the side very stiffly. After Matt, it was kind of a blunt reminder of standard First Order hospitality. I walked past her and into the room before the door shut behind me. Inside it was dark, and there was a panel of what looked like rippling, almost opaque glass in front of me with an opening off to either side. I crept to the right hand side and peeked around the corner of it. 

The entire wall facing me was a window, and outside hung a beautiful red planet with enormous white polar ice caps. Whichever sun that lit it was out of view, but the stars behind it glittered. In front of the mirror, sitting in what looked like a pretty standard meditation pose to me, was Kylo Ren. His back was to me, silhouetted against the incredible view.

“Whoa,” I said softly, stepping past the glass barrier. I couldn’t take my eyes off the window. It was nothing like watching space documentaries. You think that shit might prepare you for seeing an actual planet outside your window, you are dead wrong.

“Sit,” said Kylo, not turning to look at me but gesturing to the little pillow on the floor beside him. I shuffled over to him, taking a seat, staring all the while. It made me feel less nervous. His energy was bristly, but less overtly hostile than the last time. “This is my meditation room.” 

“This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” I replied.

“Tattooine?” he asked, and I thought I heard incredulity in his voice.

“I’ve never been in space before,” I explained. 

“Oh,” was all he said at first. “Not that you remember, anyway?” I shook my head.

“No. If I have, it’s totally gone.” _ Fuck. _I was supposed to be lying about my past.

“Curious.” He was silent again for a moment, but I could feel his eyes on me. You can’t _ not _ feel his eyes on you. Like I said, kind of hot, but a little too spooky. “You said you’ve been seeing things you couldn’t, knowing things you shouldn’t, when we last spoke.”

“I know you killed your master,” I replied, looking sharply over at him. “I saw that.” He didn’t need to know that I’d watched it on a movie theater screen, of course. He tensed visibly.

“Yes. I’d prefer if you didn’t use that against me, but I know I can’t stop you,” he growled. “Except by killing you, of course.” Well, that’s a pretty easy way to activate my fight-or-flight mode, jerk.

“Why don’t you kill me then?” I asked him suddenly, impulsively, glaring at him and feeling myself get angry. I crossed my arms. “Just get it over with. You don’t know me from a hill of beans, you think I’m dangerous, and I don’t want to be here. I don’t know how I got here. And I’m starting to doubt I will ever get back home.” He regarded me strangely. My cheeks were hot, and somewhere in my brain the part that could watch my symptoms was on high alert. I felt recklessly suicidal, but that felt _ good_, at that moment. Like I just wanted to be angry and fucked up, damn!

“Do you want to go back?” he asked, surprisingly not furious.

“Yes,” I replied. “But I don’t know how. Or where to go from here.” I looked away from him as I felt my eyes start to water, back out the window. “Or what I’d be going back to.”

“The Force cannot show you?” he pried.

“It’s not showing, and I forgot how to ask. That’s why I offered to study with you. Maybe I will get home one day if you can teach worth a damn. If I still want to.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Who knows,” I replied, thinking about Matt. _ Just be here. Start over, fuck it. _ Kylo appeared to be turning this over in his mind for a minute.

“Our training will begin with finding where and how you access the Force within you, then. Can you feel it when you close your eyes?” I glanced at him, then shut my eyes. I felt like my skin was crawling, like my thoughts were tumbling around in a washing machine, and like my meager breakfast wasn’t sitting well in my stomach. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just heightened levels of agitation.

“I don’t think so. I can’t just… feel it. It _ happens _ to me.”

“We may try to induce it, then. What causes it to happen?”

“Um.” For the life of me, I couldn’t think of how to answer that question with a lie that would get me anywhere. Triggers? For the Force? Can I have ‘what triggers your psychosis’ for 500 instead, please? Fuck. _ Just go with it, _ I told myself. “Sensory deprivation. Sensory overstimulation. Panic, I think.” 

“I see.” I did not much like the tone of his voice, when he said that. When I opened my eyes, though, it was already too late. 

His hand flew up around my neck, and squeezed my air passages with all his incredible strength. _WHAT THE FUCK!!! _ I started to claw at his hand, trying desperately to suck in a breath, to scream, my vision full of a beautiful red planet. It felt as though I was falling, pulled down into the gravity of Tattooine. For some reason, my first thought was that I was in a tiny space ship, flying down towards the surface, ready to pull up sharply before I slammed into the dusty ground. I felt the profound jerk of the imaginary ship, like I was at the wheel slamming whatever space-brakes I had.

Then I heard a distant shout, and I realized that both Kylo and I had gone flying through the air, for some reason. Cold oxygen filled my lungs, and I crumpled onto the floor of the meditation room. Kylo slammed into the glass barrier wall, tumbling to the floor in a heap. As I sat up, gasping, I saw him begin to get back on his feet. I felt a familiar and terrible unease, as his figure seemed to ripple.

When he raised his head and looked at me, all I saw was a demonic shadow, thousands of red eyes blazing at me. But hiding behind him I saw a little boy, crouched down and staring at me with the same terror I felt looking at whatever Kylo had become.

Then I screamed, and scrambled away from the horrible thing, throwing the pillow I had been sitting on at it. Which is fucking hilarious if you think about it, like throwing a pillow at Kylo Ren even if he hadn’t just morphed into a horrifying monster would accomplish literally anything, right? But I’m a fighter, and I’m not very good at fleeing, so even as I retreated into the corner and curled up into a ball against the cold window, I was trying. I hid my face in my hands, pressing into my closed eyelids until I saw stars. I couldn't seem to catch my breath. _ Stop stop stop stop go away go away go away GO AWAY! _

When everything was silent for much longer than made sense, because I was neither freshly cauterized by a light saber nor being chewed on by a demon, I peeked warily out between my fingers. I thought I saw Kylo sitting on the floor, watching me intently from several feet away. Everything was a little blurry, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t a demon anymore, and the little boy wasn’t there. It dawned on me that I had been off medication for six days, and I might actually be psychotic. _ Fuck me. _

“Aeon?” a voice asked as I slowly emerged from the fetal position. I thought it was Matt’s voice, for a split second, but I think that was wishful thinking. It was probably just Kylo, and I simply wanted it to be Matt’s sweet, concerned tone. I couldn’t reply, at that moment, so I just stared back at him until he came into focus, wondering if his face would spontaneously sprout more eyes again. I leaned back against the window, the cold of it acting as a grounding tool, finally starting to feel like I’d gotten enough oxygen for my brain to return to its normal semi-functioning state. When he moved, I flinched, and he went still again. 

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You tried to _ choke _ me,” I pointed out, starting to feel my anger rise again.

“I was trying to induce panic,” he explained, less than sympathetically.

“Well it fucking worked!” I shouted back. Fuck you, my guy! I wished he was Matt so bad. Then he might apologize, transform into a nice person, but he didn’t. I was starting to really see the stark differences in their facial expressions, their tone of voice, their movements. Maybe they _ were _ two different people.

“It did. You used the Force,” he replied coolly.

“You can’t just- wait, I did?” Full stop. Every single thought in my brain was arrested. _ Did he just say... That was me? I did that? _

“You didn’t notice how we went flying in different directions?” He was being sarcastic. It was much less becoming on him than on Matt. I looked back at him, narrowing my eyes.

“What… what did you do after?” I asked him shakily. “Where did the little boy go?”

“What little boy?” Kylo asked. His face fell into a concerned, almost angry expression. 

“The- he was just here. And… you…” Yeah. I was starting to think that was all a hallucination. He was looking at me like so many other people had, in my life. Like I was batshit insane. “I _ saw _ him.”

But Kylo looked more disturbed than I expected. More like he believed that there was truth to what I was saying, even if he hadn’t seen it himself. That, I was not used to. His brow was knit into a scowl, and he looked me over.

“I think that’s all for today,” he said finally, and began to rise to his feet.

“What?” _ Are you fucking kidding me?_

“We’ll resume in three days. You should rest.” And, just like last time, he turned and left without another word. The doors to the little chamber slid open and shut. I blinked at the place he had been standing. Like, seriously? You're just gonna leave? After CHOKING ME NON-CONSENSUALLY? I was _so fucking pissed_. 

“FUCK YOU!!” I screamed at nothing, and picked up a nearby pillow and slammed it into the window as tears rose in my eyes. Then, I saw the planet again. It was so massive and silent, so perfect and beautiful. There were so many stars behind it that I struggled to make them all out clearly. I took in a deep breath, and let it out as slowly as I could manage. My loneliness started to wash over me, and I realized suddenly that missed my parents. My house. My cat. The smell of grilled cheese, which my mom would make me in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep. My internet friends, who were my only close friends at that point, staying up late and talking to me about everything. Making me feel so much less alone. 

For the first time since I’d arrived on the ship, I started to sob uncontrollably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof. tragically, all that fluff couldn't last! but i do plan to continue to explore the SI's symptoms, which are based loosely on my own and those of other folks i know. 
> 
> i will do my best to mark any content warnings in the chapter summaries, but if you think anything needs a disclaimer that i have neglected, please let me know. i do want to delve into some real stuff, in there with all the fluff and humor, but i don't want to upset anyone in the process.
> 
> also, i'm using certain popular tags in Kylo fic as inspiration for certain chapters, so if there's a tag you think would be great fodder for content, i'm all ears! :3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which this isn't actually a college AU, I promise.

Two days later, I finally heard from Matt. Okay, it wasn’t that much time, but it felt like fucking forever, especially after Kylo basically assaulting me to induce Force-chucking his ass into a glass wall and leaving without so much as an ‘I’m sorry.’ Someone needs to teach that fucker about aftercare.

My datapad beeped about an hour after dinner. It had never done that before, so I picked it up off the bedside table. There was a little blinking button, and when I pressed it, the screen opened up a new box, with a message.

**Hey wobbles. How you holding up?** I couldn't stop myself from smiling a mile wide. Apparently they have text messaging in Star Wars! Or something like it, anyway. I tapped the button that he’d shown me before to create a keyboard, and tapped out my reply.

**Okay. Much less wobbly today. What are you doing?** I wondered how long it would take him to respond. Turns out, at least at that moment, not very long.

**Nothing, as of five minutes ago. You want to hang out? I don’t have a lot of time, is the only thing.**

**Yes. I’m in med. But I want to go back to my real room and get something. We could meet up there and just chat for a little. It’s room GB 270-07.** I had been missing my guitar the past couple of days, so going to get it seemed like the perfect excuse to go talk to Matt without the possibility of Lucky Sevens buzzing around and making it weird.

**You sure you know how to get there?**

**It’s the only path I have memorized on this whole ship.**

**Perfect! I can meet there in half an hour.**

**See you then!** It felt really strange not to have an emoji to put at the end. I slipped on my boots quietly, and took my newly acquired outerwear and the datapad with me as I ambled off to my quarters. It was exactly the same as I’d left it, untouched by any sort of housekeeping. The bedclothes were still a rumpled up mess and everything. _ Oh come the fuck on! _ I slid open the door to the closet and hung up my new coat and hood, and pulled two sets of trooper underclothes off of the floor and into the little laundry hamper that was built into the wall. I elected not to go into the bathroom, lest I end up looking at my own face and freaking out. _ You look fine. Don’t even worry about it, _ I told myself repeatedly as I smoothed out the sheet and blanket on the bed. The guitar was right where I’d left it, leaning against the wall beside the little sofa.

The door chirped before I even knew it. Only slightly frantic, I ran over to open it.

“Hey!” I said, beaming.

“You got new clothes!” Matt responded, quickly stepping into the room so the door would shut behind him. I smoothed the front of my shirt instinctively, worried that it was wrinkly since I hadn’t actually gotten it washed since I’d worn it to Choking Lessons. _ Note to self: learn where the fucking laundromat is. _

“Yeah, courtesy of the Supreme Leader.” I shrugged.

“You look great,” he said shyly, and I must have turned pink because he changed the subject immediately. “This your room?”

“It is. I haven’t been here in a few days, though. My brain is… whatever it’s doing, Lucky wants to watch it like a hawk.”

“Who’s Lucky?”

“Oh, Lucky is the medical droid that’s been taking care of me since I got here.”

“The droid is named Lucky?”

“No, I just call it Lucky Sevens because it has a bunch of sevens in its designation.”

“Oooooh, okay, I get it now. Sevens must be considered lucky on your planet. You get all that medicine stuff cleared up?” He looked at me expectantly. 

“There’s no medicine like what I was taking before here on the ship,” I assured him. “Lucky has me on something for the vertigo, though, and the headaches. Until I’m done detoxing.”

“Hm,” Matt replied, rubbing his finger on his clean-shaven chin pensively. “Alright. I suppose I can be satisfied with that. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Thanks. Come on, sit down! I don’t have any Jogan fruit juice, I think it’s just a water dispenser over there in the wall, but you can have some if you want.” I felt a twinge of my childhood, steeped in Southern hospitality, filling me with guilt that I couldn’t offer much to my guest. But it was silly, seeing as I was also a guest here on the ship, basically.

“I brought you some contraband, actually,” Matt whispered as he took a seat on the sofa, and I followed suit.

“Contraband?” I didn’t even know what was considered contraband in the First Order, but I got really excited anyway. Mostly because Matt brought me something. _ Aaahh! _

“We’re not supposed to bring food out of the mess hall or galley, technically,” he explained, and reached into his chest pocket. “But we got something kinda special from our last shipment I thought you might like. But, be careful!” He pulled out a little sphere wrapped in gold foil. I looked at it, confused. 

“Careful? You are really sending mixed signals tonight, Matt,” I chided him playfully, shaking my head. “What is it?”

“This is a Namana fruit candy, from Bakura. They’re _ amazing_, but they can literally be addictive. They make you a little… you know. Euphoric.” He grinned mischievously and placed it in my palm. I tried not to melt. “Just the one shouldn’t get you craving too bad, though. And good luck finding more, anyway, they don’t bring many of these on board. For obvious reasons. You might wanna save it for a mandatory rest day.” I looked at the unassuming little ball, fascinated.

“Did you just give me drugs?” I asked, teasing him.

“Now, I think that’s a little bit of a stretch, hun. These are legal, and not very powerful. Hardly a deathstick.” I suppressed a cringe. So, midichlorians were considered a myth, but the deathsticks of the prequels were still a thing. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

“Alright. Thank you. I’ll hang onto this,” I assured him, and tucked it into my trouser pocket. “How have you been?”

“Me? Just the same, pretty much,” he replied with a shrug. “You?”

“I started lessons with you-know-who.” I couldn’t wait anymore to get that out. Partly because I desperately wanted to tell someone, and partly to watch his reaction. 

“Oh, really?” His surprise seemed genuine. “How did that go?”

“Awful, actually.”

“Why? What happened?” Now he looked concerned.

“He tried to _choke_ me. He said it was to induce panic, to make me use the Force.”

“Holy shit.” He blinked at me, clearly shocked. “Did it work?”

“Yes,” I admitted, frowning. If he was just Kylo and great at acting, I couldn’t tell.

“Wow. That’s amazing. And pretty awful, yeah.”

“That’s not all that happened, though.” I felt anxious, bringing this up. Talking about my hallucinations isn’t something I regularly do. Matt canted his head, like an adorable golden retriever, and curled his knees up on the couch as he turned to look at me.

“You know you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he reminded me.

“I… really want to tell someone. I didn’t even explain it all to Kylo.”

“You didn’t tell _him?_” I shook my head in reply, and he whistled. “Damn. The fact that you can keep secrets from him… that’s impressive. What was it?”

I shifted on my side of the couch, uncomfortable. I hadn’t even told Lucky Sevens about the hallucination. If it affected my brain scans, the droid had made no comment about it. I figured it might be temporary, the effect seeing things has on your wave-particle activity, or whatever the fuck.

“I… saw a vision.” Matt looked rapt, nodding slowly as if to encourage me. “I saw… I saw Kylo turn into a demon. Like a big, black shadow with a thousand red eyes.” His brow wrinkled with worry. “And… there was a little boy, I saw, crouching behind the demon. The boy was scared to death, but I think he was scared of _ me _. It went away really quickly. This was after he’d choked me, and apparently I sent him flying across the room in response.” I looked expectantly at Matt, awaiting his response. He blinked.

“That sounds _ terrifying_, Aeon,” he said finally, and reached out an arm to rest his hand on my shoulder. He seemed completely sincere, like always. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ve seen demons before,” I admitted, shrugging. “The little boy was new.”

“You’ve seen that before? More than once?” His eyes got wide.

“Yeah, similar things to that.” I started to wonder if I was going to regret opening up about this.

“How do you not piss your pants every time, honestly! I totally would,” he laughed. Okay, maybe it was fine, actually. He didn’t seem upset. Just worried about me. I smiled.

“I know how it sounds, but you get used to it.”

“I’ll gratefully take your word for it,” he chuckled.

“We start again tomorrow,” I said. 

“How do you feel about that?”

“Unhappy. I might be terrified. I might just be angry. He didn’t handle it well, when I flipped my lid. He just told me he wasn’t gonna hurt me, which was hard to believe as you might imagine, and then said that was all for the day and I should rest. Then he just bounced, didn’t say he was sorry, didn’t really even ask if I was okay. I wish...” But I stopped myself from saying _ I wish you had been there instead, _ just barely. I shook my head and scowled. “Ugh. He makes me _ so _ fucking mad.”

“He might be terrified, too, hun. Not that you have to do anything to make _ him _ feel more comfortable, of course, but. I assume you have an idea of his strength?” That caught me very, very off-guard. 

“Yes, I have an inkling.”

“Yeah. You just showed _ him _ up. Think about it.” Matt smiled at me, just a little. I was completely baffled. It seemed like a Kylo-in-disguise thing to do, to summon sympathy for the devil like that. But he was so obviously invested in my well-being, too. _ UGH, REVEAL YOUR SECRETS, BEAUTIFUL CREATURE! _ “You really are something,” he added. Now he was looking at me with open admiration in his sweet, dark eyes. I looked away from him as I blushed. Even though this was the moment thus far that most resembled the fanfic I had spent so many days trying to believe I had fallen into, it made me profoundly uncomfortable now that it was actually happening.

“I am much too much of something. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be a little _ less_. A little smaller. Being whatever I am, it takes up a lot of space. It eats into other people’s lives. I just want to be small. Sometimes I want to be nothing, even just for a little while.” I looked down at my lap, tugging on the sleeves of my shirt. I knew I was in that rocky, weird place where mania and depression bump up against each other and fight for dominance, and I end up trying to provoke someone I know could hurt me, or getting in my car and driving three states away for no reason, or spending $5,000 in a single month on whatever I want, and still feeling like shit. During those phases, things that should feel good usually don’t, so I end up doing something that feels bad just so I can feel something aside from the deep depression I know is coming. And the lack of medication meant that now I was going to struggle to keep my mouth shut about it all, on top of that. 

Suddenly there was a hand on my chin, nudging it up just a little.

“You just threw the Supreme Leader of the First Order across a room, Aeon. I don’t know what you are, and maybe you don’t either. But whatever it is, it will never be small. And it never should be.” Our eyes locked as he said this unfathomably kind thing to me, and for a minute I think either time or my heart might have actually stopped. It was one of those Movie Moments™, right before the main characters go in for their first big kiss. _ Oh fuck. Oh fucking shit fuck holy FUCK. _

Then, he let his hand drop back down to his lap, and looked over at my guitar where it leaned against the wall. Yeah, I know. What a fucking bummer. “Now, can you tell me what that is?”

“It’s called a guitar. It makes music,” I explained, reaching back behind me to pluck it up from its nesting place. At least if we were gonna talk about my guitar, I could let go of my disappointment and just process it later. Probably by playing the guitar. Healthy coping mechanisms, am I right?

“Music, huh?” Matt’s face lit up. “You play it?” 

“Yes, a lot. I’ve been slacking the past few days, though.”

“Well, you’ve had a lot to deal with,” he pointed out.

“True.” I pulled the capo off of the neck and started to check to see if it was still in tune. The best thing about the climate control on a spaceship is that the air temperature and humidity are phenomenally consistent, so it didn’t need much tuning at all. Matt watched me with unfiltered delight. 

“Will you play something? Pleeeeease?” he implored me. I know we just _ didn’t _ kiss, but come on. Like, God, how could I possibly say no?

“Oh, alright. Lemme see.” I ran through the catalogue of songs I knew best in my head, trying to pick one. I settled on one of my favorite Laura Marling songs, because I love her and I know an embarrassing amount of her songs on guitar still. It also isn’t very complicated, and when I play in front of people I tend to get shaky hands. Stage fright, I guess. I usually stay away from fancy shit until my nerves settle.

As I played and sang, I could feel the tension leave my body a little. I didn’t look at Matt, because that would have ruined the whole performance no matter what expression was on his face. But singing and playing lets me feel my feelings in ways I struggle to do, otherwise. That was why I had wanted to come back here anyway, to grab the one thing that had come with me from home. The thing that helped me so much, no matter what.

When I was done, I hazarded a glance at Matt. He was looking at me with the most mortifyingly awe-struck smile, and it took him a moment after I stopped to snap back to reality a bit and clap his hands joyfully. I resigned myself to a bright red complexion for the rest of my life, probably. 

“You didn’t even warn me that you _ sing _ , too!” he accused me cheerfully. “That was _ so _ beautiful. Thank you so much! Wow. I’ve never heard anything like it!”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, trying hard to do what my therapist had asked me to try and just take the compliment like an adult. _ Just TAKE IT and say thank you, dingus!! _ You ever tried that? God, it’s so fucking hard to do. “It makes me feel better.”

“I bet it does. Makes me feel better just listening to it,” he replied happily. _ Oh my God. Stop being nice to me. Shouldn’t you be saying something toxic? That’s more what I’m used to, I guess. Aaargh! _

“I’m glad someone feels that way,” was all I said out loud, and we both laughed. Once again it tapered off into one of those awkward silences that I hate. “What time do you have to go?” I asked quietly.

“Soon,” he replied, and his voice was a little sad. I looked at him, a little sad myself.

“Thanks for coming by.”

“Of course.”

“You’re my only friend here, Matt. I don’t even know what state I’d be in without your company. I appreciate it a lot,” I told him in another fit of honesty. “So does my brain,” I added, trying desperately to be humorous. He smiled.

“Thank you for being my friend, too,” he replied. He was sitting so close to me. The tension from before, you know, when we _ didn’t _ kiss? Was still there, and it was just getting worse.

“You gonna be busy again for a while?”

“Yeah. Possibly very busy. I might be hard to reach for a couple of days.” I felt my heart break a little. Suddenly, I got nervous that I was too attached. It’s not healthy to only have one friend, right? That you happen to also have a hideous crush on? How else was I supposed to make friends here? Go schmooze with the storm troopers?

“Oh. That’s okay. You gotta do what you gotta do,” was all I said.

“I’ll beep you on the datapad when I’m free again, though,” he reassured me. I smiled a little at that.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, Aeon. And don’t be afraid of the Supreme Leader, or the Force, or of being too much.” His mouth quirked into a little lopsided grin as he looked down at me through his glasses. He reached out and brushed the tip of my nose with his finger. I wanted to die a little, on the inside. Then he uncurled himself and stood up to his full, incredible height.

“You take care, too,” I told him, waving my fingers at him. He smiled at me before he walked out of the door, and it slid shut behind him. I stared at the spot where he’d been standing for at least a minute, totally silent.

“Fuck,” I said to nobody, laying my guitar down on the couch away from me so I could lay down face-first into the cushions and groan. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK,” I told the couch. “What am I doing? What SHOULD I be doing? Uuuuugh. I just wanna kiss Maaaattt.” I turned around onto my back and stared up at the drab gray ceiling of my quarters, distraught. Then, my communicator beeped in my pocket.

“Aeon Flux, it has been sixty minutes since you left the medical bay. Are you alright?” The droid’s voice sounded even more tinny from the little speaker.

“Yeah, Lucky, I’m sorry. I got distracted playing guitar. I’m coming back now,” I replied, pulling the little plastic tube out of my pocket for long enough to hit a button and tuck it away again. Sighing as melodramatically as humanly possible, I got up off the couch and grabbed my things to head back to the med bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a little shorter, but you know, Matt is just too cute to resist writing about for long.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren has some emotions, and Hux has none.

It turns out getting your laundry done on a ship the size of the Supremacy isn’t that hard, because there are a shit-zillion people on board who all have to get their laundry done regularly. So, my one (1) outfit that wasn’t storm trooper underclothes was clean for my second day of training, and that day I was taking as much positive as I could out of the little things. As you can imagine, I was really, really not looking forward to it.

This time, I requested no escort. One, because I had been trying to use my space-GPS and learn my way around the ship, and two, because everyone who worked directly under Kylo always acted like they were awaiting a swift death. Which I found very off-putting and anxiety inducing. In light of all that, I left the med bay at least an hour ahead of time in case I got really lost. 

The floor that his meditation room was on was one of the higher floors, not quite the command levels but close. I was trying to remember everything that Matt had taught me, and kept zooming in and out on the datapad to check where I was.  _ Note to self: Find out if this thing has a ‘destination’ option that can show me the path there, like an actual GPS, or not. _

Like a dingus, I was staring at the map and not where I was walking, and literally ran smack into General Hux, of all people.  _ Shit. _

“Hey! Watch where you’re- oh. If it isn’t our... guest. Pardon me, but you should consider looking ahead while you walk, madam,” he said to me, catching himself mid-shout. I hadn’t even seen him in person yet, much less spoken to him, and he was already talking to me like I was a child who he was required to speak respectfully to even though he obviously had no respect for me. I frowned.

“I’m not a ‘madam.’ Please just call me... Aeon,” was the first thing out of my mouth. Why do they even have genders in space? It occurred to me, too late, that Hux was fond of his title and of the formalities of his rank in general. “Sir.” He lifted a single red eyebrow at me.  _ He’d be a lot more handsome if he didn’t always look like he smelled something dead, _ I thought.

“Indeed,” he replied. Nope, he definitely did not respect me. Kylo probably told him I was being trained, so Hux couldn’t be outright rude, but I’m guessing he didn’t advertise that I’d managed to accidentally chuck him into a wall during our first lesson. Hux looked down at my datapad. “Are you lost, then, Aeon?”

“Um,” I replied, glancing down at the screen. “Sort of. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll pay more attention to where I’m walking in the future.”

“Where is it you’re going?” he asked.

“The Supreme Leader’s meditation room.”

“Ah, for your… lessons.” He looked disdainful, but maybe that was just his face. Probably both.

“Yes.” I didn’t add the ‘sir’ this time. Because fuck that guy.

“Would you like me to escort you thither? Perhaps you can avoid walking into any more senior officers,” he offered.  _ Sardonic little shit. _

“Oh. Thank you, General. You’re very kind.” I was 100% sure nobody had  _ ever _ accused him of being kind before.  _ Two can play this game, buddy. _ He narrowed his eyes briefly, then gestured for me to walk in the direction he had been going, so I turned around and filed in beside him. He was just as fussy and immaculate in person as he was depicted in the movies. Voted ‘Most Likely To Be Canon Compliant’ at the Self-Insert Fanfiction Academy, I bet.

“How do you find the ship so far, Aeon?” he asked me as we walked. I found it highly sketchy that he was making small talk with me, but I decided to go along with it.

“Overwhelming,” I replied honestly. “It’s... large. But the facilities are top-notch, so far. The medical bay droid has been taking good care of me.”

“Oh? I’m afraid I’ve not been kept apprised of your condition. Are you unwell?” He seemed more curious than concerned.

“Yes,” I said flatly. “My scans are pretty all over the place, and I don’t remember anything between my falling asleep in my own home and waking up here. It’s stressing the droid right out, I’ll tell ya. But so far I’m hanging in there, sir.”

“Are you certain you’re in good condition to be training with the Supreme Leader, then?” Hux asked, brow knit. “Not that I would expect him to see reason, on that subject, but-”

“I think my training could help me in the long run, actually. I’d like to recover my memories. There’s stuff that I do remember from a long time ago, and a lot of things I know as if I remembered them, but they didn’t happen to me.” Ah, yes. Meta-knowledge of the plot must be maintained as a Force ability or else I am royally fucked, probably. Nevermind that the next movie hadn’t even fucking come out yet. “I need to relearn how to access the Force intentionally, and maybe then I’ll be able to use it to recover what happened to put me here.” 

“You remember events that did not happen to you?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of events?” He was blatantly interested now. I knew it was time to flex.

“I saw the Empire fall the first time, General. I watched Darth Vader throw The Emperor to his death, as if I were there. I saw the Hosnian system turned to ash by your superweapon, before the Resistance destroyed it. I heard the screams of their children, slaughtered for the sake of your victory.” I knew all my shitty poetry would pay off one day. I looked him in the eyes, and maybe it was the constant state of slightly-to-very manic symptoms, but I felt pretty fucking powerful in that moment. “As if billions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.”  _ Hah! _ Nobody but Luke would be able to call me on plagiarizing that one, and he was dead.

Hux looked like I’d been very successful in putting him on his back heel. Perhaps a shade paler than usual, if that was even possible.

“It’s no wonder the Supreme Leader wishes to train you, then,” was his only reply. He stopped, and gestured behind me. Sure enough, we were in front of the doors to the meditation room, and just barely on time. “Do you disagree with the political ideology of the First Order, then, Aeon?” Almost intrusively, I heard Admiral Ackbar in my brain shouting  _ It’s a trap! _

“I can’t afford the luxury of political opinions, sir. Your Supreme Leader is teaching me the ways of the Force, without which I’m stuck here. I’ll be in debt to the First Order for that for a long time.” Whew. Sidestepped that one. I could tell that Hux’s opinion of me had gone from annoyed to very begrudgingly respectful and possibly somewhat suspicious. I decided to keep a low profile, if I possibly could. I almost forgot how slimy that fucker actually was.

“Indeed.” I was already starting to hate it when he said that.

“Thank you for your assistance, General.” I could get used to speaking overly formally and condescendingly to pasty fascists, I decided. It might be a bad call, but still.

“Of course,” he replied, nodding his head slightly. I turned around and entered the room, grateful to hear the doors shut behind me and to be out of his sight. I knew intellectually, of course, that Hux was not even remotely to be trusted. But now I felt it in my bones, too. Because I was pretty sure I was lowkey on his shit list. Letting out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, I walked somewhat slowly around the glass wall.  _ Ugh. Two of the most fun people in the First Order all in one day. Delightful. _

That day, the ship was in orbit above a blue planet with swaths of dark landmass all around it, orbiting a binary star system. I stopped to look at it just like last time, because honestly seeing a huge beautiful planet outside a giant window never gets old. Kylo was there, sitting looking out the window, also just like last time. I desperately did not want to walk towards him, but I did it anyway, and took a seat on a pillow. I left a bunch of fucking space between us, though.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked in a low voice. Much like almost everything Hux had just said, it felt like a formality more than a personal inquiry. 

“Depressed,” I replied bluntly. 

“Why?” I side-eyed him real hard.

“Let’s see, mostly everything I told you the last time I was here, before you surprise-choked me and didn’t even apologize for it, is why. Not a whole lot going on for me, other than that.”

“Your medical tests indicate that you enter this state with some frequency,” he replied.

“You keep tabs on my medical tests? Yanno, where I come from, that’s illegal unless you’re the doctor who’s treating me.” Ah yes, HIPAA compliance. It made perfect sense that nothing like that was in place under a totalitarian dictatorship, but I was still bitter about it. Paranoid thoughts ran under the rest of my thoughts like ticker-tape, exacerbating the familiar fear that I was being monitored and watched at all times. 

“You are my pupil, and your medical tests are somewhat involved in why I’m bothering to teach you in the first place.” Damn, okay, point.

“The droid told me that midichlorians are a myth.” 

“They’re considered legendary, yes. We have no way to detect them, so it doesn’t matter if they’re real or not. But, we know what happens on certain medical scans can be correlated with Force-sensitivity.”  _ Is that even canon? _ I thought.

Let me explain, real quick. I’ve read enough of the Star Wars novels to know that in the old books, before a certain Mouse scrapped them and started producing the new extended universe, there was a thing called ‘Force psychosis’ which basically caused Capgrass syndrome- for those of y’all who don’t live in and out of psych wards, that’s a belief that everyone around you is actually an imposter. I’ve actually had bouts of it before. It also manifested in some wild and rare Force powers, of course. But Kylo Ren was not supposed to be part of that canon. Then again, neither was fucking Matt the Beautiful Perfect Angel Radar Technician.

“Okay. Yes. I get depressed regularly. Sometimes reactively.”

“When you’re in a more active, heightened state, that is when the Force-sensitivity most often manifests,” Kylo explained. I thought about it for a moment, and realized that this meant that in Star Wars, psychosis could actually result in Force powers.  _ Oh man. If only my therapist could hear this, _ I thought.

“Sometimes I’m both at once. Sometimes I alternate very, very quickly.” Was I explaining my unique brand of bipolar to the Supreme Asshole now? 

“That may be why it’s so confusing for you to try to connect to the Force.”

“Damn. That… makes sense.”

“Almost like I know what I’m talking about,” Kylo said dryly. He looked at me with flat irritation. I scowled back, and stuck out my tongue.

“Okay, grand master, why don’t you tell me how  _ you _ connect to the Force?” I countered, crossing my arms. Not that I didn’t have an idea, but let’s be honest, it’s never fully explained outside of ‘reach out with you feelings’ and ‘Kylo Ren has a lot of feelings.’ Like, okay, George. We get it. You didn’t think that hard. And neither did your successors, I guess.

Kylo’s expression got a little more serious, a little more thoughtful, and he looked back out the window at the planet below. My eyes followed his, and I saw another planet back behind the nearby one. It looked greenish-gray, from here. A sister planet. Just like their sister suns.  _ Damn, that’s so cool. _

“I’ve been connected to the Force since I was born,” he said, and for a second I almost told him that was a total cop-out, but then he kept talking. “I’ve always felt it, but it was connected to my anger more strongly than anything else. Darth Sideous taught my grandfather that his hatred made him powerful, and he was right. I know that firsthand, now.” I kept my eyes on the window, my heart racing.  _ God I wish I hadn’t ended up here before I found out if you get redeemed or not,  _ I thought.

“So, to connect to the Force you get angry? Or is that your secret- you’re always angry?” I knew he wouldn’t get the reference, but I couldn’t help myself. 

“I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m always angry,” he replied. Holy shit, dude, did Kylo Ren just express a modicum of self-awareness?

“It’s not. That’s fair. I guess I’m just saying, if you have to use your emotions to connect to the Force, it makes sense that you’d use the one you have the easiest access to.”

“Some are more potent than others.”

“Just like in real life,” I muttered. “I mean, like, in relationships. Outside of the Force, certain emotions have a stronger effect on us than others,” I added quickly. He raised an eyebrow at me, but he seemed pensive. Like this whole angle had never even occurred to him before. I was not shocked at all.

“So, what emotion do  _ you _ have the easiest access to?” he asked. Now he kind of sounded like my therapist. That was way too weird. Luckily for him, I actually go to therapy now, and I knew the answer to that question.

“Loneliness,” I replied. Yeah, I know, this sounds like a big Angst fic now. But damn, it’s true. Being crazy as fuck will really alienate you from everyone around you. Remember that boyfriend I was talking to Matt about? Remember the girl who liked me until she found out I was bipolar? I haven’t even scratched the surface. But it’s fine, I’m dealing with it. Or I was before I got spirited away, I guess. I looked at Kylo, awaiting his response.  _ What crazy Force powers was I gonna get from feeling lowkey like shit most of the time, huh? Riddle me that, Supreme Dickhead! _

But he was just staring at me, as if my answer struck a chord with him that was totally unexpected. Damn, the power of being honest about your FEELINGS! I swear to God, his entire face changed. I don’t even know how to describe it. He stopped scowling, and the anger fell out of his eyes, and now they just looked sad. Like Matt’s, but even sadder. His shoulders sagged, and his mouth fell down into the saddest little frown I’ve ever seen, and his big beautiful lips ( _ oh God, stop it, brain _ ) just made it worse somehow. He looked like he was about to cry, and I almost felt like I’d kicked a puppy, or something.  _ What the fuck…? I mean we all know he needs a fucking space therapist but DAMN. _

For what felt like a reaaalllly long time, neither of us said anything.

“Probably not helpful, huh?” I murmured, and I couldn’t keep his gaze anymore without being overwhelmed with the desire to run over and hug him, which I found deeply confusing, so I looked out the window again. But I saw his reflection in the glass, and he looked at the floor for a moment before looking back outside, too.

“It never helped me much,” he said so, so quietly. Even his voice had changed, gotten... smaller somehow. Like I cannot tell you how much he seemed like almost a different person. I mean, in the movies sometimes Adam Driver’s face changes- you can see him go from pained to angry really clearly. Man, that guy can act his pants off. Or he could act  _ my _ pants off… anyway. This was even more profound than that.

“Anger is a secondary emotion,” I said, compelled all of a sudden into the sagely wisdom I had learned from- you guessed it- my therapist. “It exists to protect us from pain. But it’s a temporary protection, that we should reserve for real threats. People just can’t tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived one. So we get angry to protect ourselves and end up hurting other people, and ourselves in the process.” I sighed. “When I was a kid, getting angry didn’t help me. Because I was a kid, and the adults were the ones in charge. I got so fucking angry all the time. It never mattered. I never won the arguments.”

I thought I saw his lip tremble in his reflection.  _ Oh fuck, please don’t cry. _ I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the whole damn galaxy was so emotionally repressed, considering the baby boomer who’d created it. But there was no stopping now, so I just kept rambling.

“So I don’t default to anger. I mean, I do get angry, I’ve gotten angrier on this fucking ship than I’ve gotten in years, to be honest. But I learned to be sneaky instead, and to be quiet, and to physically distance myself from what feels dangerous. And when I feel like I’m in danger, it’s almost like my emotions just… turn off. I can be mean, even cruel, but I don’t want to  _ fight _ . I want to end the fight before it starts. I guess…” I chewed my bottom lip. “That might make it hard for me to intentionally use the Force, if my emotions are turned off.”

I kept glancing at Kylo’s reflection, silently begging the universe not to see tears on his face. I could not physically handle the urge to hug him, and if he cried I knew Caretaker Mode would be activated, and then what? What if he snapped out of it and became Big Angry Kylo again? Or worse, if he started using me as his therapist??

Then, I saw his shoulders straighten. I’m not sure I believe in auras, but the vibes I got from him started to steel up and get Angry again, sort of passively. His face changed- back to the Angry Mask. Like smashing his helmet had just caused him to create a mask out of his own face, now. 

“If that’s the case, you’re right. You may access it when you’re panicking, but we’ll have to focus on accessing it when you’re not. You said sensory overwhelm also causes it? We could create a highly stimulating environment, without threatening you, and create a focal point for you to channel that overwhelm into, maybe.” He looked at me, all business. I glanced at him from the side. I won’t lie, my dumb horny ass was immediately thinking,  _ Oh, highly stimulating, huh? I can think of a few non-threatening ways to accomplish that… _ Three years, y’all. THREE. Then the reasonable part of my brain said  _ Wow, literally stop. I will forgive your crush on Matt, but Kylo is a loose cannon. He seems like the type who might ignore your safeword. Do not engage. _

“I think that might work,” I replied, bullying past my ridiculous brain long enough to consider the fact that this was a much better idea than surprise choking. I actually had no idea if it would work at all. It might just cause another hallucination. But, in this universe, there was a strong possibility that those were the same thing, so fuck it.

“Alright. We should move to a different environment, in that case.” Kylo rose from his seat.

“Wait,” I called as I stood up behind him. “Can… can we do this tomorrow? It’s late, now. I haven’t been sleeping well. I think I’ll do better if I’m rested.” To be honest, I was just slightly overwhelmed from almost-weeping Kylo and summarizing the contents of my therapy journal for the past however many years and generally just wanted to be far as fuck away from his chaotic fucking energy. And, it  _ was _ actually dinner time. He regarded me for a moment. I waited for him to be angry, impatient, something like that.

“Agreed. I’ll make a few preparations. We should start early tomorrow. Rest.” He gave it like an order, and turned to leave the room. This time, I shuffled out behind him. He turned in the opposite direction from the one I needed to go, and didn’t offer any other goodbyes. Strangely, I felt like I kind of wished he had? Maybe seeing him act like a person for a single minute had made me wish he would do it more often. Just without the almost-crying. I turned on my datapad and opened the ship map, trying not to think too much about whatever it was that had just happened. 

“Welp. Tomorrow could get weird,” I murmured to myself, and shuffled off down the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks everyone so much for your kudos and comments! this is the most fun i've had writing fic in a long time, so i'm glad folks are enjoying the ride with me :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In space, no one can refill your lamictal.

I am really not a morning person. When Sevens woke me up the next day, I had been asleep for all of four hours. So much for following orders.

The same awkwardly silent woman who had escorted me the first time showed up this time, but I almost didn’t wanna know where we were going anyway. I wanted desperately to bring my guitar, or _ something _ soothing, because despite the whole ‘trying not to make me panic’ angle, I didn’t have high hopes for today. I wasn’t quite nervous, though, because I felt a little too dissociated to be nervous. I call it ‘getting up into the Gundam.’ It feels like you’re a tiny person inside your own head, and you’re just piloting your body like you’re in a giant mech anime. I was way up in the Gundam already.

We entered a part of the ship I’d never seen before. Okay, there are a lot of parts of that ship I’d never seen before, but still. It just made me more uncomfortable, which caused me to dissociate more. Or to notice that I was dissociated more. I can’t always tell.

Finally we arrived at a network of hallways that lead to several individual rooms that looked eerily familiar. _ Please do not let this be where I think it is, _ I thought, as I realized that some of the rooms had what looked like metal chairs inside them. The woman stopped in front of the open entrance to one. I looked inside, and saw Kylo Ren standing next to one of the metal contraptions. I noticed the wrist and ankle cuffs on it, and remembered where I recognized it from.

“Oh _ hell _ no,” I exclaimed, stopping at the entrance. “Fuck that, there is no fucking way!” Did this motherfucker seriously just bring me to an interrogation room? For _ ‘sensory overstimulation’ _? Matt hadn’t already kissed me, so this was obviously not going to devolve into depraved BDSM fic (tragically.) To my mind that left about one (1) other option. The woman who escorted me was staring at me in shock for back-sassing the Supreme Asshole.

“I’m not going to torture you, Aeon. I just chose this room so there’d be no distractions at all,” Kylo explained, throwing his hands up in a gesture of pacification. I didn’t move, only glanced between him and the chair. 

“I literally cannot imagine why you think I would trust you about that,” I retorted.

“I know, I know. You have no reason to. I’m just…. Asking you to anyway.” His mouth bent into a resigned frown as he realized that he had no bargaining chip for that one. His bargaining chips were in the negative, actually. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Please.” Honestly, getting a ‘please’ from him was lowkey so satisfying that it won me over.

“Fine.” I walked into the room, approaching him. Fuck, he was _ so _ tall. “But I swear to God, if you’re lying…”

“I have no reason to lie,” he said. His energy was still armored and spiky, but he seemed almost more at ease around me now. I saw him give one extremely pointed look at his subordinate, and heard her scuttle away quickly. “I’m going to shut the door, though, to prevent interruptions. Just so you know.” He walked over and pressed a button on the console that did just that. I gotta say, I was surprised that he had the decency to warn me about it before he did it. Now, to just work on getting _ consent _ next time…

“Do you really expect me to hang out on this thing?” I asked, indicating the metal chair. It wasn’t much like a chair at all, now that I was close to it, more just a metal slab where I’d be lying prone or, if upright, standing on the weird little footrests at the bottom. Which seemed somehow more precarious _ without _ the restraints.

“You can just sit on a chair,” Kylo said, and I looked off to the side and saw that he’d brought in a couple of nondescript black chairs. _ Maybe coulda mentioned those first, jackass. _ “Unless you’d rather be on the board.” Wait, was that _ suggestive_? I eyed him, decided it was wishful thinking for my own sake, and went to sit on a chair. He took his spot in the other chair, and held out a gloved hand to me. There was something in it. I eyed him again before reaching out my palm to accept whatever it was. He was getting a lot of looks from me, today. 

What he dropped into my hand looked for all the world like a piece of clear quartz. Quirking a brow, I looked at it a little more closely. There was a perfect opportunity here for a joke about being an Instagram witch, but I was too legitimately puzzled to come up with it. He wouldn’t have got it, anyway. But, he must have sensed my confusion.

“It’s a kyber crystal,” he explained. _ Wait, what? _

“Oh.” Why would he give me a crystal that was supposed to power a light saber? Once again, it’s like he knew what I was thinking when he responded. Which made me slightly concerned because I’d never struggled with the delusion that other people were reading my thoughts, and so far he’d been unable to because I was non-canonical...

“I thought their attunement to the Force might be beneficial to you, given our purpose.” _ Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually. _ I was a little bit impressed, to be honest. 

“Ah. So, this is my focal point?” 

“Yes.”

“Oh, okay. That’s doable. What about the sensory part?”

“There are a few different options. We can use some of the equipment in here on very, very low settings--”

“I thought you _ weren’t _ going to torture me?” He looked at me sternly.

“The lowest settings would only provide very mild electrical currents. So mild it’d be difficult for you to tell that you were experiencing them at all, unless you focused.”

“So like a TENS unit?” He just looked at me, which I realized was Kylo-speak for ‘I have no idea what that is but I’m not going to say anything because I’m the Supreme Dickhead, you figure it out.’ “Nevermind, it’s a low-electricity thing back home. They use it to lightly stimulate the nerves under your skin, to treat pain, mostly.”

“Pretty similar to that, yes. So, there are a few physical sensory tools here. Lights, sounds, things like that. But, I can also try to use the Force to affect you.”

“I thought you couldn’t use the Force on me?” He looked a little grouchy that I’d brought it up.

“I thought it was worth a try.”

“You can try, then, but I think you should do the other things, too. You know, in case you don’t get anywhere.” I smirked at him, and he glowered in response. But he stood up and started to pluck items off of the elaborate control panel in the room that I knew was normally used to torture people like, oh, I dunno, Han Solo? Poe Dameron? Rey? 

“Here,” he said, and handed me a few things that looked a lot like electrodes from a normal hospital, but without wires. “You can put these on your body to use the electric currents I was talking about.” I took them and looked them over, and then looked down at my body. It felt very far away and unfamiliar, still. I started to take off my boots, because the only TENS unit I had ever used had been applied to the bottoms of my feet. It was pretty relaxing, actually. I found myself hoping my feet didn’t smell terrible. 

By the time I’d managed to stick electrodes on my feet, wrists, shoulders, and the back of my neck, Kylo had rigged up a little droid that was now floating up behind where he would be sitting, and flashing multicolored lights at me. I squinted at it, frowning.

“This is already getting on my nerves,” I grumbled. He turned on something that sounded like a big, whirring fan, and the sound reverberated all around the metal room. Also very annoying. But, when he turned on the electrodes, that didn’t bother me. It was still weird, but I could tell it was on and that my nerves were responding to it, at least. _ Is being really dissociated going to throw a wrench in this exercise? _ I wondered. _ That could suck. A lot. _

“Now, hold the crystal in your hands and focus on it,” he instructed as he sat back down across from me. Reluctantly, I sat back in the chair and cradled the little clear shard in my palms, looking down at it despite the irregularly strobing lights in my eyes. We were both silent, for a moment, and I felt almost like I was dissociating even _ more _. Which was the opposite of helpful. I looked up at him.

“I’m… feeling strange today. Do you mind helping me? Guiding my meditation, or something teacherly like that?” Kylo looked at me thoughtfully.

“Try to breathe very evenly, and very deeply,” he said, and honestly his low voice was so soothing. I love deep voices in general. I looked back at the crystal, and took in a slow breath. It felt like my lungs were wrapped up in plastic, like the dissociation was causing me to struggle to relax enough to breathe deeply. “Imagine the light from the droid is flowing into your lungs with the air, and spreading out through your entire body one place at a time. From the top of your head, down your nose and cheeks, down your neck, across your shoulders, all the way down your body and limbs to your fingers and toes. Imagine it pooling around the kyber crystal,” he continued. The whirring of the fan was like a noise track playing beneath his words, which kind of got under my skin. In a less than pleasant way. I kept trying to breathe deeply, and the more I imagined the light moving through me, the easier it got. But the longer the fan went on, the more the electrical current continued, the more my skin felt like it was crackling, sparkling. It wasn’t really painful, it was just… well, overstimulating. It didn’t hurt but it wasn’t relaxing, either. 

“Imagine that the crystal is the nexus of all this light, all this breath, every sensation on and under your skin,” Kylo said, and I knew that he was leaning towards me with his elbows on his knees, watching me with that burning gaze you could feel from miles away. “Imagine that energy flowing through you, and out of you, and all around you to everything else. To the floor, to the ceiling, the halls, the other rooms, the people all over the ship. To me.”

As soon as he said ‘to me,’ I felt a prickling sensation all over my hands. I felt somehow both slightly overwhelmed and even more profoundly dissociated, staring into the crystal as it flashed with every color of the strobing light the droid continued to emit. I’ve never been hypnotized before, but I imagined this was what it must be like. I definitely _ have _ been on acid before, though. This was not really like that at all. Around me the world was falling away, like in the act of sensing all the energetic activity around me, I lost all the details and instead only felt the pulse of it moving through me in an endless loop. It was a little freaky.

“Aeon?” I heard a voice through my dulled senses, and I looked up to see Kylo staring at me with a look of shock growing on his face. And suddenly, behind him, I saw a figure in a black coat with red hair. _ Is that... Hux? _ As if in slow motion, I saw the redhead draw a blaster out of his coat pocket and point it directly at the back of Kylo’s head. His face began to turn black and shadowy, and a thousand red eyes opened all over it. _ FUCK! _

“STOP!” I shouted, forgetting everything else and trying to lunge forward to protect Kylo from the shot somehow. I don’t know how I planned to do so, exactly, but that was my only idea.

The next thing I remember is falling to the floor, a shout, and darkness.

\-----

I woke up dazed and blank in the medical bay for the second time since my arrival.

“Ow,” I groaned, reaching up to touch my head where it hurt like hell.

“Aeon Flux, please do not touch your head. You have a cut that is dressed and healing,” said a familiar robotic voice.

“Sevens… what happened?” I asked, turning my head to try and look at the droid. The lights were fully on, for once, which made that difficult. I was propped up on the hospital bed. Everything was still blurry, and slowly I started to remember what I’d seen. Suddenly I was filled with a rush of panic. “Where’s Kylo? What--”

“The Supreme Leader is right there,” Lucky replied, and I turned my head to the other side of my bed and blinked. Sure enough, there he sat on the same stool that Matt had been sitting on the first time we met, both of his black leather gloves lying on my bedside table as a tiny little droid was working on a ragged-looking wound on the first two fingers of one hand.

“Oh! You’re not dead!” I exclaimed, the panic draining into relief.

“Should I be?” he asked dryly. I was too scattered to even sass him.

“What happened to your fingers?”

“You bit them. But it’s okay, it wasn’t on purpose.” I swear to God, I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“I _ bit _ them?” I asked, even more confused than before.

“You had a seizure, Aeon Flux. The Supreme Leader was trying to prevent you from swallowing your tongue,” Lucky chimed in. “Unfortunately it is impossible for you to do that, though a common misconception, and though he prevented you from _ biting _ your tongue, it appears that you bit his fingers, instead.” _ What? This makes no sense. He stuck his fingers in my mouth? This really reads like there was kinky shit going on that I don’t remember. Like, this sounds fake. _ I looked back at Kylo, baffled. He was glaring at the droid a little, but then he shrugged.

“Learned something new, today,” he remarked, as the droid finished stitching him up. _ Wow, that was uncharacteristically chill. And did he really just almost smile at me? Is the galaxy ending? Did the writers just decide to scrap everything and embrace a surreal Force vision scene? About kinky sex gone awry? _ “You bit through my gloves and everything. I’m almost impressed.” But I was too busy trying to recall more of what had been happening before the seizure to give him a dirty look for that. I missed a lot of opportunities, that day.

“Wait, why did I have a seizure?” I asked, glancing between the man and the droid. “It’s the withdrawal, right?” I’d had a seizure only once before, when I’d forgotten one of my medications on a weeklong vacation with my friends. Oof.

“It happened while you were using the Force, again,” Kylo replied, sitting upright on the stool and waving the little droid away. HIs fingers looked almost like new. Space medical technology is pretty awesome.

“So... it worked?”

“Yes, very well, in fact. Before that, you were floating off of the chair, and, well. This is what your crystal looks like, now.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the kyber crystal. When I took it from him, I saw it pulsing gently with a weird, phosphorescent glow.

“Whoa,” I said. _ Holy shit, _ I thought. _ What does that even mean? _

“You’ve channeled the Force through the crystal. It’s yours, now.” Boy oh boy, if that didn’t feel like a Chosen One Delusion moment. _ Am I gonna make a light saber next, coach? _

“What about... “ I trailed off, looking at Kylo with uncertainty. Hadn’t I watched Hux appear and shoot him in the head? “Nevermind. I think I was just seeing things again.”

“_Again_?” asked Lucky, sounding both shocked and annoyed. “You have been having hallucinations?” I glanced guiltily at the droid, frowning.

“Yes, Lucky. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Talking about them has… put me in rough places, in the past.” _ Yeah, involuntary treatment ain’t exactly a vacation, buddy. _“But it’s okay, they haven’t been happening a lot.” 

“We will speak more about this later, Aeon Flux,” threatened the droid, totally unconvinced that it was ‘okay’ at all, and stomped off to take care of some kind of medical droid business. I sighed. This was not ideal.

“How are you feeling?” Kylo asked. This time, it seemed like it was tinged with… actual concern?

“Exhausted,” I replied. My eyelids felt like they were made of lead, and all my limbs too. I almost wished I was still dissociated. “I wonder if getting fucked up every time I use the Force is a victory or not. If this can really be considered progress.” I felt my mood start to dip, my feelings veering towards hopelessness. I’d started to believe my own shtick that if I learned to use the Force, I could spirit myself right the fuck back home. I sagged back into the hospital bed, and tapped the controls to ease it back and make it a little more horizontal. Kylo was regarding me strangely again.

“Baby steps,” he said. My heart skipped a beat, and I looked up at him with wide eyes. His face was different, but not sad like last time. It was… tender? Concerned? Sweet? _ Holy shit. _ If he had been wearing a gray jumpsuit, and glasses, and if his hair was blonde....

He stood up, picking up his gloves. The tenderness was gone, as quickly as it had arrived. “Get some rest,” he said, his very favorite thing to order me to do, and turned to exit my alcove. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. I was almost waiting on him to reach out and boop my nose. _ ARE you the same person???? _

“When do we start again?” I asked before he’d left. He stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“I’ll contact you. I have things to attend to.” And then he was gone. I heard my heart pounding in my ears. For the briefest possible moment, he really had seemed just like Matt. _ You could just ask him upfront, _ said a little voice in the back of my mind. _ Fuck no, _ another thought said in reply. _ There is no way either of them would take that well. More importantly, maybe, why the fuck did I hallucinate Hux trying to murder him??? _It wasn’t like any of my hallucinations had come true while I was here, or anything, but it still made me uneasy. I curled up under the gray blanket, and tried desperately to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter is based on my personal experience with lamictal, which is a medication that really helps me with basically no side effects. the only caveat is that if i stop taking it suddenly, i have seizures D: that's a rare thing, though. 
> 
> anyway! hang in there for some more fluff, action, gender feelings... and after that, the big reveal...


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hux is a Dick, and Matt is perfect.

I won’t lie, I was having a pretty excellent dream about Matt when I was awakened rather suddenly- and rudely, I thought- by Lucky actually shaking my shoulder.

“Aeon Flux, the General is here to--”

“Go, droid,” came a familiar, snarly voice. _ Jesus Christ, _ I thought. _ I’ve been awake for far too few seconds to have to hear that. _ I rubbed my eyes vigorously and blinked, and looked over to see a certain Evil Space Ginger standing at the foot of my bed. He was alone. Lucky shuffled off unceremoniously.

“Hello,” I said, not bothering to disguise my irritation. 

“I hope you are recovering well from your little episode, Aeon,” Hux replied, as though he were trying to shame me by being more courteous than I was. I had some news for him about what actually caused me to feel shame. 

“I would recover better if my rest went uninterrupted, General,” I replied icily. Maybe it was the hallucination of him murdering Kylo, but I just wasn’t in the mood for his snobby fascist bullshit. “Is there something I can do for you, despite my current state?” 

“Indeed there is,” he replied, finally abandoning pretense to scowl at me. “I think you should discontinue these sessions with the Supreme Leader immediately.” Um, excuse you?

“Why’s that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Apart from your current state?” He held out his hands, as if my condition spoke for itself and answered my own question a little too conveniently. Nice try, you little shit.

“Forgive me, General, but I find it hard to believe that you’re here asking me to go against the Supreme Leader just out of your desperate concern for my well-being.” His scowl deepened.

“I also have some concerns about the Supreme Leader’s focus on this task. It is detracting from his attention to judicial matters, and the tremendous concerns of his lately acquired post.”

“You’re worried about Kylo, now, too? You really must think I’m an idiot,” I said, crossing my arms. “I know enough about you, Hux.”

“Do you?” snarled the man, his lip curling and trembling. He was getting worked up, and it was honestly so amusing just how Shakespearean his melodrama was that I kind of got why Poe Dameron had enjoyed it so much.

“Yes. I do. I know about your ugly childhood, Armitage. I know about your father. I know about your mother,”-- here, his face contorted even more, because he was a bastard son of course-- “I know about how he beat you, I know Grand Admiral Sloan befriended you to protect herself from him, I know she protected _ you _ from him. I know _ how _ he died. Pity Parnassos beetle poison is so profoundly gruesome in its effects. But, I guess there’s no chance of an autopsy if there’s barely any of him left, right? And Phasma’s accusers are so unfortunately deceased.” I glared furiously at him, feeling more and more exhilarated. Who knew reading Star Wars books would ever pay out this hard? “Why are you here, General Hux? If I wanted to use this information against you, I already would have tried. But I have no intention of getting in your way. I’m not burdened with any sort of physical evidence of your crimes. I don’t _ care _ who leads this army. I’m not here to win anything, or take over the galaxy, or in any way make your life more difficult. I just wanna go home. You and Kylo Ren both can carry on murdering innocents across the galaxy in pursuit of your political _ ideology_.” Damn, I really wish I’d had a mic to drop. For a long minute, Hux was silent as he glowered at me.

“I have no reason to trust you. No reason to believe that someone with as much power as you supposedly have has no designs on obtaining more,” he said finally. “Do you want to seduce our Supreme Leader, and establish yourself that way? Already, he makes rash decisions on your account.”

“Not everyone is just like you, General,” I retorted. “Not that I blame you for being suspicious. All three members of your little triumvirate have committed patricide, or worse. Why would you trust a motley of traitors? But that’s not my problem. And I don’t know what Kylo Ren does, but he needs no excuse to make rash decisions and we both know that.” But to be perfectly honest, I was absolutely _ dying _ to know what the entire fuck he was talking about. _ What rash decisions? Was he buying a wedding ring?? This’ll turn into a fanfiction yet. _

“Fine. For now, I believe you. But you are a loose end, Aeon. Until you reveal your hand.” He put his hands in his pockets, resigned but absolutely not placated. He even spoke like a fucking movie villain. It was almost hilarious, except that he was also completely in earnest.

“Run along, General,” I said flatly. He curled his lip in disgust, and turned and trotted away, fuming. Once he had exited the medical bay, I huffed. “What the fuck was that about?”

“The General appears not to approve of you,” explained Lucky helpfully from around the other corner of my alcove, and his voice was so sudden that I almost jumped out of my bed.

“Jesus, Lucky. Please don’t do that. My stress hormones are fucked up as it is!” I scolded him, less than seriously. “Were you lurking that entire time?”

“I do not know what you mean, Aeon Flux,” replied the droid. I couldn’t not grin at it.

“Oh, right, you would never. A paragon of protocol, you are.”

“Indeed,” it agreed, very nonchalantly, as it pressed a bunch of buttons on its console. “I am sorry I had to wake you. Please continue to rest.”

“I’ll do my best, Lucky, I really will.”

\-----

It was in the middle of the artificially induced night when I woke up next, to the sound of the chirping chime that meant someone was here to see me. I know, right? Like, I sure have a lot of visitors all of a sudden. But then, I heard a familiar, slightly timid voice.

“Aeon? You awake?” _ My angel has come! My sweet tender cinnamon roll!!! _

“Barely,” I replied, chuckling. “What are you doing here?” Matt shuffled around the corner of my alcove and came right up to my bed, towering over me even with his slouchy posture.

“I came to see you. I had to. I heard what happened,” he said softly, tugging out the stool and sitting with his big, warm torso pressed up against the side of the bed. I rolled over onto my side, just to put fewer inches of air between us. I had it bad, y’all. I couldn’t really see him clearly, he was just softly lit by the med bay lights that shone in through the opening in the alcove. But I really could not have cared less.

“Does everyone know everything that happens to me?” I mumbled.

“Everyone hears rumors. But this time, everyone saw the Supreme Leader carrying you back here, passed out cold. Well, not _ everyone,_ but you know. A lot of people. What happened to your poor head? Did you bang it into something?” He reached a big arm out to softly pet my very short hair, not getting too close to the bandage on my head. I felt my whole body light up with sparkles.

“I dunno. I had a seizure while we were doing a lesson,” I explained to him, my voice falling all sleepy and quiet as he touched me. _ Sooooo sooooooothing… _

“A seizure? Fuckin’ hell, hun. I’m so worried about you all the time. Feel like I never know what’ll happen to you next.” I beamed at him. To be honest, all I heard was ‘I think about you almost as much as you think about me’ and I was completely fine with it.

“I’m sorry. I’m a high-stress friend,” I laughed.

“No, no, that’s _ not _ what I meant,” Matt replied, flustered. I could tell he was turning red even in the low light. I just laughed more.

“I know, I’m just, I’m sorry. Thank you. For worrying about me.”

“Someone has to,” he murmured, continuing to pet my hair.

“I had another hallucination,” I told him. “Before I had the seizure.”

“Was it another demon?”

“Yes, but this time it was Hux. He was standing behind Kylo, and he pointed a blaster right at his head before he turned into a demon. I thought he was real, so I tried to jump up and do… something. Who knows. But then, I was out. Probably shocked the hell outta poor Kylo.” 

“It was _ Hux_?” Now, he seemed legitimately surprised and concerned in equal measure.

“I don’t think Hux likes me. Actually, I know he doesn’t like me. I think he thinks I’m a bad influence on Kylo, or something. Even though I’m not even trying to be _ any _ influence on Kylo,” I grumbled. “To be fair, I don’t much like Hux, either.”

“Hux is… well.” Matt could never bring himself to say anything too mean about anyone, even though this time I could tell that he wanted to. He was entirely too good for this miserable fictional universe. _ Come back with me to my dimension, Matt. Let me take you away from all this, _ I thought dreamily.

“He’s like a rabid dog. A sadistic rabid dog. Oh, but the other part is, I have a kyber crystal now.” There were so many things to tell Matt, and I didn’t want to linger on the subject of a shitty redhead.

“A kyber-- seriously?” Matt’s jaw fell open. I reached into my pocket under the blanket and pulled it out, and its faint glow was brighter in the dimmed lighting. I held it up close to his face.

“I channeled the Force through it!” I proclaimed proudly. He looked at it, but didn’t touch it. 

“Wow. I didn’t know they were that beautiful,” he remarked. “What are you gonna do with it?”

“Probably just keep trying to channel the Force through it in my lessons. Fuck. I just got anxious about losing it. I should work on that. I lose things with truly astonishing regularity.” He laughed, and it was the only laugh I ever wanted to hear ever again.

“You should make a necklace out of it. That’s pretty easy to keep track of.”

“Oh. That’s a good idea,” I said, bringing it closer to my face to look at it.

“I think it just got brighter, when you started looking at it!” Matt said, like an excited kid. I had no idea if it had. I didn’t care. I smiled at him.

“Thank you for encouraging me the other day. I think it helped me a lot,” I told him, tucking the crystal away into my pocket again. He leaned onto the hospital bed with his elbows on the edge of it, brushing up against my arm. _ Wow wow wow wow wow why am I like this?? _

“You should embrace what you are, hun. It sucks not to. You deserve better than that.”

“Yeah. I think that’s what I was starting to work out in therapy, before I woke up here.”

“Therapy?”

“I… let me explain that one to you later, when I’m not this sleepy. In short, therapists help you take care of your emotions.”

“Like, emotion doctors?” he asked, brow knitting. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“Oh, it is most definitely a thing. But it’s complicated. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“Okay. I can’t wait to hear all about it,” he cooed. One of his hands lifted and he stroked my cheek ever so gently with the backs of his fingers. I noticed for the first time that his skin was covered in scars. Then I remembered my recent encounter with Kylo, and I grabbed his hand and started to feel along his fingers and palm in the half-light. 

“Have you always had these scars?” I asked him, brow knitting as I found scars that I could have sworn were in the same place as my bite marks on Kylo’s fingers. But there were a bunch of other scars, too, and I hadn’t gotten that close of a look. 

“I’ve had most of these scars for a pretty long time, hun. Technical work will wreck your hands,” he chuckled as my fingers ran all over his hands, finding a dozen raised lines and marks of slightly hardened scar tissue. I grabbed his other hand, just to be sure, but it also had an array of marks that told me nothing. _ Oh well, I’m touching his hands, there’s that. Oh God, they’re so big and lovely. Murder me. _

“Oh,” I said rather anticlimactically, just grateful he wasn’t asking me to explain myself.

“What about you? Where’d this little scar on your forehead come from?” he asked me, reaching up to run his fingers along a little raised scar that disappeared into my hairline. 

“Oh, that? I uh, I hit my head on the corner of a table when I was like, two years old. I was hopping around pretending to be a frog,” I explained. “It’s not an exciting story.” 

“That’s so fucking _ cute_,” Matt giggled, and I nearly perished on the spot. I let my much smaller hands linger on his, running my fingertips across his scars absently. When he started to pet my head again, I sighed with contentment.

“You are so nice to me,” I commented.

“That’s what friends are, right? Nice to each other?”

“Ideally, yes.”

“You’re very nice to me, too,” he said.

“I don’t feel like I’ve done anything special for you, though. In fact I feel mostly like I’ve needed you to take care of me. I feel bad about it.”

“Don’t feel bad about having your own struggles. You never put anything onto me. I helped you because I wanted to.” Wow. Secure attachment is hot.

“That’s fair. I hope you’ll tell me if you ever need help. If I can do anything for you, I always will.”

“I believe you.”

“I know I’m not very convincing, at the moment, given the circumstances.”

“Give it time. Baby steps,” he said. My heartbeat sped up again. Was it not weird that Kylo said that? Was it just me reading way too deep into things and being paranoid??

“Baby steps…” I trailed off, not wanting to think about it while I was getting to touch Matt’s hand for this long.

“You need to rest, hun. I need you to rest. For the sake of my worried self,” he laughed. “But mostly you need to rest, for your own sake.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” I admitted quietly, frowning.

“You want me to stay here with you till you fall asleep?” he asked. Um, what? Yes? Until I die, honestly. 

“Would you?” I looked up at him, saucer-eyed.

“Of course. You’re halfway there already,” he grinned.

“Oh, you’re an angel. A treasure. Thank you.” I curled up a little, still holding his hand in mine, pulling it up close to my face so I could press the back of it against my cheek. He leaned in a little closer, so he could comfortably leave it there, and carried on petting my head.

“I can’t sing as beautifully as you. But I can hum you a little something. Is that too patronizing? I’m not trying to make you feel like a baby or anything.” _ Am I dead? Is this heaven? Am I hallucinating again? What is going on? _

“You can do whatever you want,” I murmured, already starting to nod off. That sweet, sweet oxytocin. 

“Alright,” he chuckled. And then, he started to hum very softly, his deep voice resonating through every molecule of my body. I didn’t know the little melody he was humming, had never heard it before. Not even in obscure Star Wars media. I can safely say I hadn’t been that peaceful in years. 

I was all but gone, when he finally began to slowly extricate his hand from my grip. In fact I might have just dreamed it, to be honest. Distantly, I thought I heard him say, “Goodnight, fierce one.” Then, he pressed his lips against the scar on my forehead, before he left.

Yeah. That was probably a dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to start forming some Plot but also wanted Matt fluff, so i split the diff xD


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt is Very Nice.

A couple of days later when I had recuperated from the seizure, at least physically, I asked Lucky about my needing to possibly sleep in my own room more, get acclimated to the new environment, not just live in the hospital. I was starting to crave privacy, because (among other reasons) I felt uncomfortable playing guitar in my alcove. I also may or may not have wanted more privacy in the event that Matt and I continued to spend time together. I fully ignored the possibility that I was just accepting my fate as being stuck in the Star Wars universe, for now.

“I suppose that would be good for you in the long run,” mused the droid somewhat reluctantly. “To become more at home on the ship.”

“I can still come in for check-ins, Lucky. I know you wanna keep an eye on my brain,” I reassured him. 

“Hm. Would you be opposed to my configuring a monitor for you to wear? So that I may continue to record your electroencephalopathic activity as an ongoing component of your treatment?” I looked at him, uncertain. 

“You want to record my brain activity all the time, now?”

“Yes. That would be ideal, in case you continue to have episodes of hallucinations or other temporary anomalous occurrences.”

“I…”

“Aeon Flux, it is possible that with my assistance you may become able to stop the hallucinations. Do you desire this outcome?” It seemed sincere, and it’s honestly hard for me to explain just why this made me even more uncomfortable, exactly. _ Possibly because stopping the hallucinations might also affect my ability to use the Force? _ I was beginning to get attached to the idea that the two could be connected. I was also reminded a little too much of the single and apparently paramount goal of most of my psychiatrists, which was to completely stop my symptoms. No matter how fucked up the medication made me feel. That never actually happened, by the way. I still had the symptoms, they were just less intense and disruptive.

“No. I don’t think stopping them is the answer, Lucky.” It regarded me very blankly.

“Alright. If that is not the goal of your treatment, what should be the goal?” _ Well, that’s not something a psychiatrist is likely to ever say. _ I chewed on my lip. 

“I… don’t know. I think I just want to learn to handle this stuff on my own. I just might need your help if it becomes overwhelming.”

“That is inadvisable, however it is not impossible. I request that you continue to attend check-in appointments twice a week, or after any anomalous symptoms, or in the event of any emergencies. Do you agree?” It seemed pleased enough with this plan, and not actually angry that I was going against ‘advisable’ treatment.

“That sounds good,” I replied, impressed with space psychiatric treatment way more than I ever would have expected to be. 

“Excellent. I have updated your patient profile accordingly.” And that was that. Lucky went back to buzzing around the medical bay, tending its patients and machines. I gathered my things, and started walking back to my room. It felt like a weird rite of passage. Even though I very pointedly refused to engage in thinking about it, the feeling that I had shifted from something temporary to something more permanent was still there, lurking in my gut. _ Look on the bright side, you can masturbate again! You have a door! It’s the little things! _

When I entered my room, I was surprised to see that it was very tidy and that there was a stack of clothes on the bed. Like, a _ large _ stack of clothes. Laying my guitar down on the couch, I went over to investigate.

Y’all. These clothes were wild. I mean, to me, at least. They were mostly all black and gray. But there were pants, socks, sleeveless shirts, two really badass jackets, a vest, a belt, a tunic, two pairs of leggings (with stirrups!!! Who knew they had those in Star Wars!!!!), taller socks. A couple of the pieces featured red trim, one of the jackets had a red lining. Like damn, the First Order really upped their game from ripping off Nazi uniforms. These looked really sleek. Then, at the bottom of the pile, was a single dress. That stopped me in my tracks.

_ Fuck_. I had been too busy for the past few days thinking about how crazy I felt to even begin to reconcile the idea of confessing my gender issues. I mean, I didn’t exactly talk to a lot of people on board regularly. Mostly just Kylo, and Matt who may or may not have also been Kylo, and Lucky. So that was a maximum of three people. But still. I’d already gone through this shit so many times before. Being non-binary is a weird struggle, trying to figure out what that means and looks like is an adventure riddled with self-doubt, insecurities, confusion, and possibly dramatic consequences from people who not only fail to understand it, but deem it threatening enough to ruin your relationship with them over it. I realized I’d been ignoring my own struggle with gender self-expression in favor of trying to address issues that actually felt… solvable. Ouch.

I sighed mightily. Self-awareness is such a fucking _ bitch_. The clothes were cool as hell, and mostly they felt remarkably androgynous. Almost utilitarian, but with an eye for design. That felt very comfortable to me. The dress, though, struck me as a massive departure from the rest. I lifted it up to look at it more closely.

“Oh, wow,” I muttered, holding it up in the light of my bedside lamp. It was red, but a dark, brick red rather than Jessica Rabbit red, thank God. It had a high neck, no sleeves, and was really soft, and fell almost to the floor but was slit up either side. Not too dramatically, though. It was form-fitting. For a dress, it was actually pretty simple and androgynous. I kinda liked it. It made me wish I had a matching suit, whatever the space version of a suit would look like, in the same color. _ Do they have formalwear jumpsuits in space? _ I started to hang the clothes up in my little closet.

“I wonder if I can ask whoever sent these to find me a matching suit,” I mused out loud to nobody. “Who _ did _ send me these? Not Kylo, surely. They’re so thoughtful.” I looked over at my datapad. _ Fuck. I mean the only other fucking option is Lucky Sevens, and that defies even the laws of fanfiction. What if it WAS Matt? Even if they were the same person, would Kylo really send me clothes this cool under the auspices of being himself, or his actually-nice alter ego? _ I had two equal and opposite reactions to that notion at the same time, outside of my concern that Kylo was Matt. One was exactly the butterfly-inducing heart palpitations you’d expect. The other was a weird unease, because letting people do nice things for me is not my strong suit and I get way too guilty about it. I went over and picked the datapad up off the bed, sitting back down with it to look at the text of our most recent conversation. 

_ Fuck it. _ I started tapping out a new message. 

**There is a suspicious pile of really nice new clothes in my room. Who do I report this to?** I hesitated before sending it, but I fucking sent it, dammit, and waited. 

This time, though, there was no quick reply.

“Welp. You goofed up, you dingus,” I scolded myself. Turns out that even in space, you run the risk of having to wait for a response to a text message when you really, really don’t want to. I decided to take a real shower, rather than just the antimicrobial hose-downs they did in the medical bay, to pass the time.

When I emerged from the steamy little bathroom feeling genuinely a bit better, I tried really hard not to go directly to my datapad and check for a reply. I really did try. Be nice to me, okay?

**Hmm, seems suspicious. You’d better look for clues.** I grinned a fucking mile wide.

**There was no note, of course. That’d be too easy. But who would do something this kind and thoughtful?**

**Do you have any secret admirers among the housekeeping staff?** I actually laughed out loud.

**If I knew, then it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?**

**Fair enough. Perhaps one of the officers is an aspiring clothing designer and just wants to see if you’d wear their prototypes.** Oh come on, that was a weak one, Matt. 

**Next you’ll try and tell me that a magical Ewok that lives under the trash compactors flew in to grant me three wishes and I just forgot that I used one up on some new clothes. **

**Was it that much of a stretch? Damn. I’m off my game.** I was smiling so hard my cheeks started to hurt.

**It was you, wasn’t it?**

**Alright, you caught me.** Now the mixed feelings came back, the discomfort of accepting gifts. The not knowing his motivation. The not even knowing if he was a real person and not just a fun adventure for Kylo Ren to mess with my head.

**You didn’t have to do that. **

**I know. I just wanted to.** _Take the compliment, asshole. Interrogate him in person, if you can’t just get over it,_ I thought.

**Thank you.** Hell yeah. I did it! Where’s my goddamn award?

**Do they all fit? **

**I haven’t tried them all on yet! I just got back here. I’m going to start actually sleeping here, now. Like, not in the med bay. **

**Oh wow. Baby steps, huh?** That made me uncomfortable, for reasons previously stated. Time to deflect with a joke.

**I guess so. I’m excited to have my very own door.**

**Very stupendous. It’s almost like you’re training with the Supreme Leader himself, or something, to be granted such luxuries.**

**I know, right? Will you come visit me soon? I don’t know when Kylo will be back to resume training. It’s only been a couple of days, but he didn’t give me a date the last time we spoke. I am going to literally go insane if I have nothing to do.** I managed to leave out the ‘I miss you’ part.

**Will you try on all those clothes and tell me if everything fits first?** _What the fuck._ Why was literally everything Matt did so unbelievably cute? It boggles the mind.

**I think I can manage that!**

**Thank you. I’ll be back tomorrow. Right now I’m planetside, we’re getting a few replacement parts. Should I come to your room?** I looked at the screen, my mind wandering deliciously with the possibilities, and yet hearing my Voice Of Reason, the fucking jerk, telling me that this whole thing was still a profoundly bad idea. _ Oh, come on. I won’t start anything! But if he starts it… I mean, who am I to say no? _

**That sounds good. What time can you be here?**

**2100 hrs. That’s late, I know.**

**It’s fine, I’m a night owl anyway. ** I replied hastily. **You know, whatever night means in the frigid void of space.**

**Alright, I’ll be there, then.**

**Travel safe.**

**I will. Take care of yourself.**

**I’ll do my best.**

I looked outside the sliver of a window in my room. I could barely make out the planet we were orbiting, it was so dark below us, and dotted with a smattering of lights. Its sun wasn’t yet visible from our position. I looked at the clock, and it said 1900. 

“Twenty-six hours is _ so fucking long_,” I whined to my room. But whatever. Matt was coming to see me at all, which was enough. I was starting not to care if he really _ was _ Kylo in disguise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanted to throw this short lil chapter up for y'all real fast, because the next one is a big ol dose of FLUFF!! so GET READY!!!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y'all ever just drag your gender issues with you into a fictional universe?

At that point, to be perfectly honest, I was starting to get manic enough that certain things were slipping past me. The Voice of Reason in the back of my head was getting quieter, easier to ignore, sometimes it was silent altogether. I spent the day figuring out where to get nice smelling soap and some lotion for my dry knees and elbows, trying on all the clothes (they literally all fit perfectly except the socks, which was extremely astonishing), and discovering to my delight that there were multiple barber shops inside the ship. It was starting to feel more and more like a flying city. I wondered if there were restaurants and bars somewhere, or if they had space-billiards. I got my hair cut by a really cute, really butch woman who said she was a retired trooper. She gave me a buzz cut, like all the way around, and told me I had a good head-shape. I know I was starting to get a lil bit up there, if you know what I mean, because I was flirting _ real _ hard with her. Just ‘cuz.

Obviously, I was doing all this in preparation to look really cute to see Matt. That oxytocin was really motivating me, y’all. By the time he was supposed to be arriving, I was clean, my elbows and knees were soft, I was wearing my new clothes, and I smelled great. I was feelin’ myself big time. Oh, mania. You always make me so confident. Temporarily, but still. 

Then, it was ten minutes past. Then fifteen minutes past. Then _ twenty _ minutes past. I was eyeing my datapad hard, getting frustrated.

“I think I’d rather you fell off your pedestal by being Kylo in disguise than by standing me up, dammit,” I swore at my empty room, opening our message conversation on my datapad and staring at it like it would summon him. I started typing a message, stopped, deleted it, then started again. _ Fuck. Seriously? This is like a Tinder date, where it’s a 50/50 chance they’ll even show up. It is genuinely disturbing that this still happens even in fictional universes. _ I deleted about four unsent messages before the door finally chirped.

“Oh thank God,” I groaned to myself before heading over to the door to open it.

“Lemme in lemme in!” Matt whispered immediately as the door opened, and he darted in past me like he was hiding from someone, watching the doors shut behind him. _ Well, that’s not even remotely suspicious... _

“Uh,” I said, which was not the first thing I’d envisioned saying to him that evening by a long shot. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” he said to me with a sigh, running his hand through his hair. It flopped back down into his face adorably. “I uh, I blew off my shift early, but I thought I saw one of the guys on my way here, and I didn’t want him to see me.” I looked at him, quirking a brow.

“You’re half an hour late...” I pointed out, but then I actually looked him over. He was wearing a pair of well-fitting black trousers and a gray collared shirt, but he’d rolled up the sleeves much as he usually did his gray jumpsuit sleeves. Apparently, he’d gotten dressed up too, which was probably why he was late. _ Oh my God. See? This is no longer wishful thinking. He totally likes me back!!!!! _ The Voice of Reason made no protest.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he replied bashfully. I was staring at him so blatantly that he shrugged and held out his arms as if to offer me a better look. “You’re not the only one I got new clothes for.” 

“I… yeah!” I stammered poetically. “Wow, you look great!” He looked _ amazing_.

“Speak for yourself!” he laughed, blushing, letting his eyes roam over me a little. I was feeling way too self-assured to blush. Instead, I gave him a little twirl. After much internal debate earlier that night, I was wearing the dress. Even though I didn’t have a full-length mirror to look at myself in, I _ felt _ pretty hot in it. Then again, at certain points in the manic part of the cycle, I would feel pretty hot in a burlap sack. I didn’t have any shoes other than the boots, though, so I’d just decided to go barefoot. It was my room, after all.

“They all fit so well, Matt. I don’t know how you managed.”

“My intuition must just that be good,” he said, a little grin appearing. “I… I wasn’t sure if you’d like the dress or not, to be honest.” This struck me as sort of odd.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I just… you seem like you’re just more into pants. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Well…” Damn. That was on the nose, for someone I’d never spoken to about clothing at all before, much less my own. “Um, normally, I don’t, you’re right.”

“Really?” He looked crestfallen. “You don’t?”

“No. But I like this one!” I told him quickly. To be fair, I wasn’t lying! Once in a while there were dresses I liked, and this was actually one of them. But I felt slightly guilty, because I’d also decided to wear the dress specifically because I thought Matt would think it was hot. 

“Oh!” His smile started to return. “That’s good!”

“Yeah, everything you picked out was… those clothes are lovely, Matt. I really hope you didn’t spend a ton of money on them.”

“Listen, I’ve had some credits saved up for a while now, and nothing to spend them on. So don’t worry about it.” I just gave him a look, you know, like _ oh my God I can’t believe you spent money on me but also you’re so nice and you’re right I should just not worry about it but also oh my GOD okay fine. _ I walked over towards the couch to sit, and he followed me, beaming. I crossed my legs, which may or may not have definitely been to show them off via one of the splits in the dress.

“I know there’s gotta be a lot of different styles of clothing all over the galaxy, but you really nailed my aesthetic,” I told him. “Nothing too fancy, nothing too feminine, everything’s even comfortable. And kind of makes me feel like royalty,” I added, with an almost-embarrassed little smile. “The tails on that jacket!”

“Yeah, don’t ask me why, but I got the feeling you’d like something that felt… powerful? Not too delicate. I guess, not too feminine, you’re right,” he mused.

“This might sound weird or silly, maybe, but that kinda means a lot to me. That you, um, understood that about me, I guess. Clothes help with self-expression.” I looked at him earnestly. “That can be hard for me, sometimes.” He canted his head in that puppy-like way that I completely adored.

“Why’s that, Aeon?”

“Well…” I paused, looking for the right words. _ Okay, this isn’t social justice Tumblr in 2013, thank fuck, but how the fuck do I explain the gender thing to someone like Matt? _ “I’m… I don’t really wanna be seen as a woman, or assumed to have ‘womanly’ behaviors or desires. Or ‘manly’ ones either. I just want to be me. Most cultures use clothes to strongly differentiate between men and women, which makes it hard to present myself without the, um… cultural assumptions, I guess, built in. I would rather be known for being who I am, than expected to be like one gender or the other.” I looked at him, hoping that my words had landed. He looked right back, clearly trying to digest everything I was saying. _ Fuck, please don’t be weird about this. _

“What does your culture say about men versus women?” he asked. I guess we were in space after all. There’s a lot of cultures out there, so it was a fair question.

“Um, we code gender behavior based on body parts. Which makes no sense. I’ve always had inclinations that were supposed to feminine- I like taking care of the people I love, for example. I’ve also always had masculine ones, so like I spent a lot of my life trying way too hard to be tough. To not show my emotions. None of that shit had anything to do with my body, or my genitals, or my clothes, or my haircut, or whatever. It was all learned behaviors from my parents and shit. And my mom was definitely the masculine one! You know?” I tried to explain. Matt appeared to be thinking very hard, his brow knit into a serious expression. It was almost comical, under those glasses.

“That’s… interesting. I mean, there are a lot of cultures, and a lot of genders, and a lot of weird behavior expectations depending on where you go in the galaxy. Though, there are an awful lot of men in charge, at least around here. What about people who are happy to, uh, fit in, I guess? Happy to fit with how they’re ‘supposed’ to act, or dress?”

“That’s fine with me. I don’t care what other people do, what their bodies are like, how they dress. I just care about how people treat each other.” I was starting to regret going into my personal values, as I was, in fact, on a ship that was the center of a fascist regime. With no way off, for the time being, either.

“So, if they act the _ opposite _ of how they’re supposed to, that’s also not something that bothers you?” He had a very strange expression on his face, when he asked me that. Like he was especially anxious about my reply.

“No, that doesn’t matter to me either. People should be able to be themselves.” I shrugged. “When you told me to embrace what I am, the other day, it was a reminder I really needed. I haven’t spoken up much about gender stuff since I got here.” He was smiling at me now.

“So-- wait.” Matt suddenly sat upright and placed his hands in his lap like he was an obedient student, intent on listening to whatever my response was. “You’re saying you’re neither a boy nor a girl. And that has nothing to do with your body parts. But, it affects how you feel comfortable dressing. Is there anything else it affects your comfort with? Is there anything I shouldn’t say or do, that would make you uncomfortable?” I blinked for a moment. _ Wow. He belongs on that pedestal. He really is a perfect angel. _

“Um, well, just use neutral pronouns for me. And I guess I told Hux not to call me ‘madam’ the other day. So yeah, please don’t call me ‘madam’ or ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am.’ Or ‘sir’... titles are weird, anyway.”

“You _ told _ Hux not to call you ‘madam’?” His eyebrows shot up, but he was also smirking. “Ballsy move. What should I say instead?”

“I dunno. I used to joke with my friends at home that they could call me ‘Your Radiance’ if they couldn’t figure it out,” I chuckled. “Some of them actually did it, which was pretty funny.”

“Very well, then, Your Radiance!” Matt replied, standing up suddenly so that he could offer me a very sweeping bow. “I’ll get creative!” Now, I was _ actually _ blushing.

“Oh good grief,” I murmured, feigning frustration. He sat back down, mischievously grinning, closer to me this time. _ Literally stop being so fucking cute for one minute so I can breathe?? _ “Thanks. For listening to all that.”

“Thank you for telling me. I, um, I think that people on this ship still expect certain things because of gender. Most of us just wear the clothes we need for our jobs, and really your _ rank _ is most important, but when it comes to behaviors, sometimes...” He shook his blonde head.

“It’s more relevant to my culture than it is here, though, maybe.” _ Probably not, though. Unless the First Order are trying to be equal opportunity fascists, somehow. Then again, this is space! Anything could happen! _

“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important here, too,” he said, reaching out to put his big hand on my bare shoulder. I got goosebumps as soon as his skin touched mine. _ Shit. _ “By the way, this is unrelated, but. Your haircut looks _ incredible_,” he added, his eyes full of that sparkling awe again. My heart pounded.

“Oh, thank you,” I smiled back. Uh oh. There was another one of those _ intensely _ loaded pauses, again. Before I could compulsively blurt out something stupid, though, Matt’s expression changed.

“Aeon? Can I ask you something?” _ Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh yes? _

“Sure, Matt,” I replied, hearing my own voice fall soft, and lush, and terribly inviting.

“Well, I’ve been thinking. And given what we just talked about… would you maybe want to paint my nails?” He bit his lip nervously. I blinked, then beamed at him. _ Matt’s got a femmy side!! This is too wholesome!! _

“Um, yes? Absolutely! You have nail polish in space?” His face lit up more than I’d ever seen it before. 

“Yeah!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little vial of polish that looked very sheer and full of fine, multi-colored glitter that tended champagne-pinkish. I thought my brain was going to explode. This was starting to feel like the _ cutest _ crack-fic ever.

“Oh, that’s a really nice color,” I told him as I took it and looked at it in the lamplight. _ Not one I would wear in a million years if I even wore nail polish, but still. _ Before I even knew it, his enormous, beautiful hands were resting on my thigh, fingers splayed out expectantly. I almost blushed again, the goosebumps coming back with a vengeance. 

“You think so? I got it planetside. Because I didn’t want anyone to see me ordering it at the commissary,” he admitted, shrugging sheepishly. I figured out how to open the vial (it was a fucking space-vial, so of course it made no sense) and set about the task of painting his nails, which were of course short and unkempt. His hands were _ really _ warm.

“Do you think someone would laugh at you?” I asked, frowning.

“Maybe.” He was extra shy, now, and I wanted to scream something about protecting him at all costs, but managed not to. 

“I’ll pick some up for you, if you want,” I told him, smiling conspiratorially. “You gotta buy it, though. I don’t have any money.”

“You should really ask the Supreme Leader for an allowance.”

“For what? I get everything that I need, here, just by virtue of asking. Except the clothes, I guess. Those were a perk,” I teased him.

“A _ gift_,” he corrected. “Which does _ not _ require repayment, so don’t even go there. The allowance is for what you want, not just what you need.” I only glanced up from his hand and smirked, then returned to finish the last two nails. He watched me, fascinated. “You have steady hands,” he commented. I froze, staring at my hands. 

_ Wait, I do? _

“Um, Aeon? You okay?” I heard Matt ask. I shook my head slightly, to rattle my brain back to the present.

“Yeah, sorry. I just… I had a tremor from my medication for a long time. Even though I’ve been in withdrawal, here, it’s sort of strange that it’s apparently gone? Normally it doesn’t go away that fast, even after stopping the meds.” _ Huh. That is really fucking weird. Does it mean something? Is it the Force? Or something else? Am I reading into this?? _I decided to try to not focus on that detail. It felt like a rabbit-hole opening up in my brain that I didn’t want to fall down. 

“Huh. Weird. But a good thing, I guess,” he commented.

“A good thing for your nails,” I chuckled. “All done with this hand. Time for the sequel!” As I took his other hand in mine, the painted one landed softly right back on my thigh, sliding down gently to rest against the bend of my hip with his fingers carefully spread so that the wet polish wouldn’t get messed up. I felt my cheeks burning. _ Okay, this is not what I imagined, but it’s very nearly even better, _ I thought. As I started painting his other hand, he fell silent again, watching. He was so close, I could feel his gentle breath on my neck, could hear the soft sound of it. He smelled clean, and peppery, and _ oh God why am I like this. _I took my time finishing this hand, of course. I didn’t ever want to stop touching him. Oxytocin is an amazing chemical, even better when it’s paired with someone as cute and beautiful and angelic as Matt. I’m just sayin’.

“Wow,” he murmured when I was done, resting that hand on my thigh next to his other one, canting his head to look at the glitter as it caught the lamplight. I could see the joy on his face, a very certain kind of joy that I knew all too well.

“You’re not worried about someone bullying you at work because of this, are you?” I asked, slightly worried. Even though he was huge, and could surely handle himself.

“I don’t care anymore,” he sighed. “It feels so pretty. I really like it.” He caught my look, which had morphed into a big, dumb, lowkey love-struck smile. “What?” 

“Oh, nothing. You’re just… so happy.” _ You just got to have your first gender euphoric moment, because of me, and if I got any happier about it I’d die of my fucking heart exploding. _ His cheeks turned red.

“Thanks,” he said softly. “I’ve been putting it in my pocket for days, trying to get up the courage to just put it on. I thought about giving it to you. After everything you said, I thought maybe you’d be cool with doing it for me instead.”

“Cool with it? I fucking _ adore _ it! You can wear whatever you want. If someone makes fun of you, just lemme know. I’ll Force-chuck ‘em into a wall, Kylo-style.” He snorted. 

“Please, don’t worry about it. I’m just happy,” he murmured.

“Thank you for letting me make you happy, then,” I said softly. He looked back at me, a strange look on his face. I didn’t quite realize just _ how _ close we’d gotten to each other during this process. I felt his hands on my leg go stiff, like he was suddenly nervous. He bit his lip, just a little, and I swallowed. I was about to mc-freakin’ lose it, y’all.

“Um, sure,” he stammered, blushing and very quickly pulling his hands off of my lap and even kinda scooting away from me a little. _UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGHHHH._ Normally I'm more proactive than this, but my promise to myself was not to start anything. I was starting to hate myself for being so committed.

I don’t think my disappointment had time to show on my face, though, before something much worse happened. Out of the blue, I noticed something behind Matt. Standing away from us near the other end of the couch was a figure. I blinked until it came into focus.

It was Kylo Ren, looking completely fucking furious. Standing next to him, holding his hand, was a little boy with dark hair and sad eyes, looking at me reproachfully. It was the same little boy from before, in the meditation room.

My eyes flew wide open in shock, and as if that weren’t enough, then Kylo went and sprouted a thousand extra red eyes, his face melting into a shadow around them. Suddenly, drawing his light saber, the demon flew right at me.

I screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have to say, i'm a little anxious about writing in the sense of gender dysphoria here, but it's important to me. and so is fluffy bonding with Matt over his femme side!! he's so fkin precious and good :3
> 
> i've said thank you already, and i'm gonna keep saying it, so thank you for your readership, comments, kudos, bookmarks. this fic is really helping me with some things, including having fun and a sense of humor about my own bullshit lol. if you like something, don't like it, have questions, etc... your feedback is welcome and appreciated!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren has one (1) entire modicum of chill.

“Aeon! Aeon! What’s wrong?” My hands were clamped over my eyes, palms pressing down on my lids to not even let a little light in. I was gasping for breath, my heart racing. I realized that I was being held very gently, and the brief moment where I’d forgotten about everything but being scared to death by a demon passed and I remembered what was going on. _Oh yeah. Matt's here. Shit._ I burrowed into his chest, hands still on my eyes, and felt his strong arms wrap around me. One large hand stroked my back.

“It’s alright, hun. I’m right here,” he cooed softly into my ear. “I’m not going anywhere. Unless you want me to, obviously.”

“Don’t go,” I whimpered pathetically. I hadn’t seen anything that vividly in _years, _and now I was gonna be a huge baby in front of Matt. There was a part of me that wanted to run, to beg him to leave, to retreat into darkness all alone and suffer the terror of my hallucinations and reckless poor decisions without burdening anyone else. That was the part of me I’d spent too much fucking time in therapy trying to deal with to let it boss me around now. “Is it gone?”

“It’s not here now. Or, I can’t see it, at least. That might not be helpful.” I pulled my hands off of my face and pressed them up against his chest instead, but kept my eyes shut. I felt and heard the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out, and felt his hand rubbing my back. I waited like that for what felt like a long time, before I finally began to open my eyes, and then to ease my gaze out of the dark, safe cavern of his arms and towards where demon-Kylo and the little boy had been standing. They were gone. I sucked in a long breath, slowly.

“Okay,” I said, closing my eyes again and turning my head back around to look into the crook of his neck and then lean into it wearily. _ Fuck. That’s getting really old. _

“Was it another demon?” he asked softly. I nodded. Then I thought about the implications of seeing Kylo while I was here with Matt, struggling against doing the thing I had told myself ad nauseum _ not _ to do. _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

“I’m sorry. It flew right at me,” I murmured. I felt Matt nod, and one of his hands came up to stroke the back of my buzzed head. _ Oh, that feels nice. _

“It’s okay. Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Thank you.” _ Oh, please don’t be Kylo in disguise. Please don’t do that to me. _ To be totally honest with y’all, I started to cry a little bit, then. Nobody had _ ever _ been that understanding about watching me have a hallucination. Most people start freaking out almost as much as I am, and yelling at me that it’s not real, as though that's supposed to fix it??

“Oh, hun,” I heard him whisper as I suppressed my sobs as hard as I possibly could. “Is everything you see that frightening?”

“No,” I murmured in response. “Sometimes, I used to see things that were so beautiful, I couldn’t describe them. I thought maybe they were spirits, or angels.”

“Wow. That sounds incredible.”

“Sometimes I just see people, or objects. I thought this entire ship was a hallucination when I first got here.”

“Yeah, I remember you telling me you were trying to decide if it was real, or not.” I could hear the smile in his voice. 

“Right now, I’m trying to decide if _ you’re _ real or not,” I joked with him. The deep, low sound of his chuckle filled me with reassurance.

“I’m real, or I was the last time I checked.” He had no idea how many layers of irony were wrapped up in that statement, considering the fact that he wasn’t even canon.

“Good to know,” I laughed wanly, leaning into his arms, unwilling to leave them. But I had to. And after what I’d just seen, I was feeling kinda guilty about pushing any more. Was it my brain trying to scare me off of a bad idea? I sighed, and pulled away from Matt to sit up properly. “Thank you. I feel better, now.”

“You sure?” he asked, full of puppy-dog eyes. _You're not making not being held by you any easier, my guy._

“Yeah, I’m okay. I think… I think I need to sleep.” God I hate being responsible!! Matt nodded, though I thought I caught a hint of disappointment in his face. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

“You oughta try and be well-rested for your lessons, and stuff,” he agreed. “I was gonna ask you to maybe play another song for me, but we can always do that some other time.” I felt my heart crack a little. I tried to smile anyway.

“Yeah, I’d love to do that next time,” I assured him. He smiled back at me.

“Okay. I’ll just ping you when I’m free next?”

“I’d like that.” His smile seemed to brighten a little, and he stood up from the couch.

“Great,” he said softly, and then put his hands in his pockets rather sheepishly and just stood there, smiling at me. I smiled back, and even though I was totally bummed, he was being so cute and awkward that it was making me feel a little better. For a moment we just awkwardly smiled at each other, until finally Matt broke and gave a little laugh. “Okay, I should go.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, and he kept looking back at me as he shuffled to the door.

“Goodnight, Aeon,” he said quietly.

“G’night, Matt,” I replied, just as quietly. The door slid open. He gave me one last little wave before he turned and shuffled out. The silence in my room rang in my ears. 

“You are _ such _ an idiot,” I scolded myself, rubbing the bridge of my nose to try and offset the headache that was definitely coming on. 

\-----

The next day I spent a lot of time looking at the list of items I could order from the commissary without actually ordering them just yet, since I had no money. Then again, maybe I had the Kylo-Ren’s-Sorta-Apprentice-Pass, and they would give me free stuff. Out of respect, obviously. Or fear, possibly. I just wanted new things!! Anything to offset the massive sense of fuck-this I was feeling after my visit from Matt. I used to be a shopaholic, and at one point I fell back on shoplifting. Before that I did whatever drugs were at the party. I have a fuckin' cornucopia of bad coping mechanisms. I thought about looking for a bar on the ship, then remembered what a bad idea that was. I also thought about the euphoria-inducing candy Matt had given me, but since I knew I couldn’t get any more that seemed like a stupid idea too. I pointedly avoided thinking about the fact that I really just needed to ask once and for all if Matt and Kylo were the same person. I was too frazzled to sleep well, even though I tried. 

The day after that, I woke up much too early with my brain buzzing and started playing guitar to try and settle down. Mid-song, though, my communicator beeped. I stopped and looked at it over on the bedside table, and it crackled with static for a moment.

“Aeon Flux. The Supreme Leader has requested that you return to lessons today, at 1000 hours in his meditation room. Shall I inform him that you will comply?” came Lucky’s robotic voice. I’d kinda been hoping that maybe Kylo would just give up on me and stop our lessons, to be honest. But, it had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it? I picked up the little thing.

“Yeah, Lucky, I’ll be there. Thanks.”

“I am surprised you are awake at this hour, Aeon Flux. Normally I must call on you several times to hear a reply. Are you well today?”

“I’m fine. I was just playing guitar.” 

“That is good news. Please keep me apprised of your condition after your training today.”

“Will do.” I hit the button to close the channel, and puffed air out of my cheeks. “I guess I might find out today if they’re the same person or not. Or I won’t. I dunno. God, this is frustrating. But why would he act completely different when we’re _ alone _? I dunno, I’m starting to think they can’t be the same person. Everybody says the phrase ‘baby steps,’ don’t they? I mean it’s a common phrase. Apparently. Here. In Star Wars.” I frowned at myself, aware of all the inconsistencies in my logic and the limitations of my perception, and completely willing to discount them all in favor of the option that meant I got to maybe make out with Matt in the future. I got dressed, and headed to the meditation room. 

When I entered the meditation room, the window was facing out into a starfield. It was darker than it had been before without a planet or a sun outside, and apparently lacking in much artificial lighting of its own. But the stars were amazing, so closely clustered in places that they seemed like dense little clouds hanging in the void. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust as much as they could, and then I saw Kylo’s silhouette. He was standing up, and when I rounded the corner he turned to face me. 

“You have your crystal?” he asked me sharply. _ Wow, okay. No wellness check-ins from Darth Tantrum today, I guess. _ I fished it out of the pocket of my trousers. It was still glowing faintly, the gloom inside the meditation room making it even more visible.

“Yep,” I replied. “So, no overstimulation today?” Kylo only looked at me, his perma-scowl not shifting. Then, I saw him tug his light saber hilt off of his belt, and my skin started to crawl. The vision of the demon wielding that same weapon and lunging towards me wasn't exactly helping. But he didn’t activate it, only held it up as though to let me examine it. In the extremely low light. How was this helpful, again?

“The crystal--”

“Is the source of Force power for the light saber. I know.” He lifted an eyebrow.

“Do you also know how that power manifests in the crystal?” he quizzed me. _ Joke’s on you, buddy. I’m a huge nerd. _

“It’s channeled by the person using it. By their wisdom, their protectiveness, their pain, and how they use those things. I understand what I knew before about the crystals and their colors better, now, after you taught me about accessing the Force with your emotions.” I wasn’t actually trying to butter him up, believe it or not. It was true. I’d been obsessed with the color of the light sabers and what they meant ever since I was a kid and Samuel L. Jackson got a purple one in the prequels. Y’all know I had to have me a purple one, when I was like ten or something. I got those toys banned from the playground, because I took combat with plastic Star Wars weapons waaaay too seriously. Kylo seemed a little surprised.

“Well. Yours is still faint, but now that it’s awake, I thought we would try using it to focus your efforts to connect to the Force. Perhaps you’ll find what feelings work best for you.” He lowered his hand and put the hilt of his saber back on his belt, which caused me to let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding in. I looked at him curiously. I couldn’t recall any Jedi in the history of the canon (or the old canon, for that matter) telling a student to use the feelings that worked best _ for them_. It was more about ‘oh yeah, Luke, just be calm and trust the Force and keep a clear head and don’t do drugs, because they make you angry and you won’t like the way you use the Force when you’re angry’ or ‘you know, Anakin, everyone actually sucks and you SHOULD hate them because it will make your saber red which is way cooler and stronger than those blue and green babies who hurt your feelings all the time.’ Something like that.

I held the little stone in my palm, looking down at it. The faint glow from it was more white than anything, but when I looked closely, I saw the shifting, almost imperceptible colors within the white light. It was weird to think about it turning just one color eventually, like as though that one color and the emotions and intentions associated with it would define me forever. Eek.

“Should I try, um, summoning some different emotions, then?” I asked Kylo, feeling a little bit foolish. It was like some weird therapy session, like ‘pick an emotion from the emotion wheel!’ 

“What are you feeling right now?” Well, that seemed even more like therapy. My anxiety around his saber was gone, since he’d put it away, so not that. If ‘waiting to learn something useful’ wasn’t an emotion, and I just took a deep breath…

I thought about Matt. Not missing home, not wishing I could talk to my friends, not feeling hopeless and trapped. Yeah, I know. It sounds real stupid. 

I didn’t say anything, just looked at the crystal and thought about him telling me to be who I am. And not freaking out when ‘who I am’ turned out to be psychotic, sometimes. Curiously enough, then I thought about Lucky. I mean yeah, Lucky is a droid. Arguably droids don’t have normal human emotions. But I wasn’t so sure, 'cuz during my several days on this ship Lucky had been frustrated, concerned, curious, protective, and supportive of me. Even Kylo, standing in front of me with his bristly aura and lack of compassion, had carried me to the medical bay when withdrawal hit. Maybe I was just feeling… grateful?

The light inside the crystal had brightened, though its color hadn’t changed, and when I blinked at it, I realized it was floating in my hand. 

“Whoa,” I muttered. “Is this real? It’s really doing that?”

“_You’re _ really doing that,” Kylo affirmed. He wasn’t quite smiling, again. I looked up at him, then back at the crystal. _ Holy shit, this is weird. This looks cool in the movies but it’s way too weird in real life. Is this real life? Even if it’s ‘real,’ does it count as real life? I don’t even know anymore. Maybe I should try to make it move! _ Squinting at the stone a little, I thought about it flying in a circle around Kylo’s head. Then I realized I wasn’t just thinking about it, I was _ watching _ it fucking happen!!!

“Hah!” I laughed, and Kylo’s face grew annoyed.

“Okay. Alright. That’s enough,” he grumbled, and the crystal halted in the air between us. I was grinning like a maniac, literally. Then it was flying in lazy loops around the room, and I started giggling like a little kid.

“It's like blowing bubbles on crack,” I laughed.

“You need to take this seriously, Aeon,” Kylo said suddenly, in a harsh voice. I jumped a little, and the stone fell to the ground. “This isn’t a game. The Force is the greatest tool in the universe, you should wield it as such.” He was… angry at me? For _ this_?? 

“Excuse me?” I retorted, putting my hands on my hips. “I’m learning something, here. Which is your doing! You should be happy about that!” _ Yeah, Supreme Asshole, fucking chill for a single minute of your life! _ “It’s called having _ fun._ You should try it sometime.” He was still glaring at me, but he paused.

“I’ve got far too many responsibilities to waste my time being frivolous,” he growled.

“Oh, come on. Don’t give me that shit. Maybe you wouldn’t be so miserable all the time if you let yourself off the hook. Maybe teaching me doesn’t have to be yet another thing you’re always angry about, didja ever think about that? Because making _ me _ angry all the time isn’t gonna help me learn shit. I learned that much in therapy, damn. The pressure just makes me break down, which just makes me…” I paused. _ Which just makes me paranoid, delusional, and psychotic. Which makes me hopeless, and scared, and alone. _ Kylo looked at me while I failed to finish my sentence, his expression stony. I took a breath, and then I took a risk. “Which just makes me miserable. Just like you.” 

The silence that rang through the room was deafening. His face was opaque, but eventually he glanced down at the crystal where it was glowing softly on the floor. _ Oh God, please don’t kill me for calling you out right now. I didn’t sign up for this. First Order News: Supreme Asshole Sucks At Dealing With Feelings, Ironically Kills Therapist. Where’s Luke’s force-ghost when I need it? _

Then, the crystal slowly floated up from the floor, and hung at eye-level. But I wasn’t the one doing it. I glanced at it, then back at him. He looked completely uncertain.

“Go ahead. Try it out. I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” I said quietly to him. Might as well practice what I preach and not just get mad at him now, right? Fear of death was also motivating me, I won’t lie. He swallowed, took a breath, and then y’all know what happened? That fucking rock went zooming around the room, looping and twirling in tight pin curves and big swooping turns. I couldn’t even stop myself from smiling, and then laughing, watching it fly all over the place! It was so fast that it left a trail of its own light behind it, like a sparkler. Then it began to slow, and finally stopped right in front of me. I put out my palm, and it settled gently there, like a little dandelion fluff on a dying breeze. When I looked back up at Kylo, his face had changed. Actually he’d done that thing where his entire _ presence _ had changed. He was smiling, faintly and self-consciously, and his eyes had gone big and sad again but now they twinkled a little at me. It was so wild. Maybe Kylo Ren really did just need a hug. And a therapist. Several therapists.

This time, the silence that hung for a moment or two was softer around the edges. I looked at the crystal. I thought maybe it was faintly tinged with a lavender color, but it was still too white to really tell. _ Damn, if I get a real purple light saber, that would be so fucking lit. _

“The next steps involve learning more discipline,” came his low voice, and I could tell that the Angry Kylo mask was back. “How to balance the multiple places from which the Force can flow into you, and out of you. How to use them all to accomplish your own purpose.”

“Am I gonna stand on my head and learn to stack rocks?” I asked, barely managing to not smirk at him. I was 100% sure I couldn’t carry him on my back Yoda-style, though. He frowned.

“No. You’re going to have to learn to defend yourself.” That wasn’t promising.

“From what?” 

“From attack. We’re at war. Eventually something is going to happen where you’ll need to. When it does, I might not be there to help you.” His face was stern, even grave. _ No looking into other people’s minds? The future, perhaps? Oh, wait. He already thinks I can do that. _ My plan had backfired a bit. I exhaled slowly.

“Okay. You’re right. But just so you know, I have literally no training in anything. I mean, I used to shoot clay pigeons when I was a kid, but I can’t fight, I don’t know karate, and once I got diagnosed with crazy-brain they wouldn’t let me on the fencing team.”

“You don’t have to do any of that,” he reassured me, though I knew he didn’t know what half the shit I’d just said even meant. “We’re going to focus on using the Force. It’s your strongest asset, right now, and you might need to know some of this sooner rather than later.” I nodded, feeling a twinge of concern at his ominous foreshadowing. _ Does he know something I don’t? Some plan he’s not telling me about? Oh my God I really, really, REALLY wish I hadn’t been brought here BEFORE THE LAST MOVIE CAME OUT, _I thought for the millionth time. But part of me was pretty fucking stoked to learn how to defend myself using the Force, I won’t lie.

“Alright. How’s that gonna work?” I asked.

“We’ll begin meeting in the officer’s training hall, and we’ll start with learning to deflect objects. But, I need you to practice moving things with the Force on your own. I’m going off-ship for a couple of days, to attend to some business. In the meantime, you have the use of this room,” he said, and reached into his pocket to pull out a passcard and hand it to me. It was much like the one Matt had given me for the technical levels, but it was red. I eyed him.

“What sort of business?” He just looked at me and said nothing. _ Oh, so it’s like that, huh? I wonder how many innocent people he’s gonna go murder? Fuck. _“Fine, okay. I’ll practice.”

“I want you to be able to lift five objects at once, when I get back.” Wow, what the fuck? FIVE? I just got here!

“Um, kay. I’ll work on that.” I did not sound convincing, I’m sure. But my manic brain kinda wanted to do it, just to prove to him that I could. _ Who’s better than Rey now, huh, motherfucker? _ I mostly likely was not going to be even remotely better than Rey, but. Well. Trying telling my brain that.

“I have faith in you,” he replied, and that threw me a little. “Apprentice.” _ That _ threw me a _ lot_. Wow, am I doing it right, coach? I nodded, and held my crystal to my chest. It was extremely bizarre to be almost basically sorta complimented by Kylo Ren. While he was _ acting _ like Kylo Ren, too. No weird aura shifts. “I have to go, and make preparations. I’ll call for you when I return.”

“Okay, um. Be safe?” I wasn’t sure that made literally any sense for me to say to him, since most people involved in whatever scenario were more likely to need to be safe _ from him_, but. I dunno, force of habit I guess. He eyed me, and nodded, and then he left. I looked down at my crystal.

“Are you gonna help me get home, little dude?” I asked it, absurdly. But I was finally feeling hopeful that, maybe, it actually would. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo out here not killing his bratty apprentice and everything! so proud of him. 
> 
> btw i'm thinking of updating on a schedule, like Mondays and Fridays? i feel like that will help me and maybe helps readers too. how am i gonna wait almost two months to know what happens in the next movie so i can do ALL the meta-layering, tho??


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hux Is Not Nice.

I spent a whole day trying to fucking lift rocks with my brain, and spent most of that time also questioning my sanity. You know, even more regularly than I had been already. And they weren’t all strictly rocks, of course, just my crystal. Everything else was random stuff, like my communicator, or a broken hunk of a scanner Lucky was going to throw away in the medical bay. But whatever. I only had two objects in the air at a time, by the end of that day.

Halfway through the second day, I brought my datapad with me to the meditation room. I’d made the mistake of messaging Matt again, off the cuff, and was now awaiting a reply. _ If nothing else, I can maybe make the damn thing float, _ I reasoned. I’d just said:

**Hi. Miss you. Hope you’re well.**

That was harmless, right? I sat on the floor of the meditation room, looking at the row of stuff I was trying to lift, glancing sullenly at my silent datapad at the end of the row. Maybe the Force would nudge Matt into messaging me back. It’s amazing, the dumb shit I make up to validate my own mildly neurotic behavior. That’s not even a symptom, it’s just a uniquely human talent.

“Okay, buddy. Let’s do this,” I pep talked my crystal as it sat glowing dimly in my hand. I gazed into it, longing only for red letters on a black screen. I focused on the emotion of desire, and the crystal began to brighten. Then, it rose into the air. Next, my communicator. Then, one of the meditation pillows. Then the other pillow._ Almost there! _Then, the hunk of scrap from the med bay. _ HELL YEAH WHO’S GONNA STOP ME NOW?? _I was flooded with a dose of Absolute Conviction. Just as the datapad began to lift up, the sound of the door chime broke my concentration. Everything except my crystal clattered to the floor, and I scowled.

“Who is it?” I shouted. The com on the door’s control pad buzzed to life.

“General Hux here to speak with you,” came an unfamiliar voice. Hux? What the fuck was his problem? Reluctantly, I plucked the kyber crystal out of the air and put it in my pocket. Then, I rose and walked around the glass wall to the doors. I was 100% prepared to tell the ginger to fuck off as soon as it opened. 

“What the hell do--” 

I almost managed, but the shock of an electrical taser to my gut cut me off.

\-----

I came to under extremely abrasive lighting, and when I tried to move my hand up to rub my eyes, I found it unresponsive. I immediately blew right past panic and into fight-or-flight. And y’all already know my preference, out of the two.

“What the fuck?” I swore, looking over to see my arm restrained by a metal cuff on the slab my back was pressed against. I checked the other wrist to see the same, and then glanced down at my ankles. “I didn’t do anything! You can’t IVC me! FUCK YOU!” I started to scream. IVC, for those who don’t know, means ‘involuntary commitment.’ For a moment, I’d forgotten where I was.

“Settle down, Aeon,” came a venomous voice from behind me. I tried to jerk my head around to see, but obviously this was ineffective.

“I’m not psychotic so you can’t fucking restrain me, you piece of SHIT! I know my rights!”

“You have no rights!” snapped the voice back at me. Then, the speaker rounded the corner. It was definitely General Hux, looking as disgusted as ever. “You are a traitor to the First Order!” I blinked at him, shocked back into the present. This wasn’t a hospitalization. It was so much worse.

“Wait, are you serious right now? I’m being detained for treason?”

“I will be the one asking questions, traitor.” I noticed that he was twirling something that had a point at the end of it, and would crackle every thirty seconds or so. _ Nope. Don’t like that. Where the hell is Kylo?? _

“What do you want, Hux?”

“I want to know what you know, Aeon Flux. I want to know who’s helping you with your little scheme.” He smirked at me, and it was profoundly ominous.

“Scheme??” _ You have got to be fucking kidding me. _

“You are clearly here to usurp the power of Supreme Leader Ren, to infiltrate his mind and learn of our plans to crush what’s left of the Resistance! You are a spy!” Probably inadvisably, I started to laugh. 

“Oh, man. That’s a good one. That’s fuckin’ hilarious!”

“Is it?” And then that motherfucker prodded me with his stick. That is not a euphemism. Being shocked for real was much, _ much _ less pleasant than the space-TENS unit from the last time I was in one of these rooms. “Is that also amusing to you? There’s more where that came from, traitor.”

“Ohohoho, we testing boundaries now? Should I pick a safeword?” I murmured, still chuckling to myself even after my yelp from being shocked. He immediately shocked me again, trying to make his point. It didn’t take long for something akin to hysteria to set in. “Oooooooh! Don’t stop now, General, it’s just gettin’ gooooood!” 

“How did you get on board that shuttle, hm? Did you sneak in while it was on the planet? Are you working with that insufferable Jakku junkrat he can’t seem to bring himself to kill?”

“Why, you tryna bring in a third? Or maybe a _ fourth_? Is Kylo in on this, too? You’re kinky, Armitage,” I replied, giggling and drooling just a little. There’s nothing elegant about being electrocuted, okay? He shocked me even harder for that. I screamed, and lolled in the restraints as my eyes began to lose focus.

It might have been ten minutes, or an hour, or four hours that went on. I have no idea. I was on the brink of unconsciousness for a lot of it. Hux was on the brink of fucking murdering me without hearing anything he wanted to hear for most of it. I know I accused him of necrophilia at one point, which he did _ not _ find humorous, lemme tell ya. I wish I could remember more, now. I bet it was pretty funny. Nothing like crisis to turn you into a comedian! Then, he took a little break. I’m pretty sure it was so my body would stop producing crisis chemicals and stress hormones, and I would finally crack.

“You tired, Huxy? I can do this all fuckin’ day,” I yelled at the empty room after he’d been gone for a few minutes. Luckily for me, he was just on his way back. 

“I know you think you can tool with me, traitor, but I promise I will break you. I know you’re here for a reason,” Hux said as he re-entered the chamber. I tried to look at him, so I could say something else inspired by all the incredibly dark Kylux fanfic I’d discovered in my spare time on the internet, but instead I looked behind him. I don’t know if it was delirium or psychosis or what, but I thought I saw that little boy that was always with demon-Kylo, standing there all alone against the wall, looking horrified.

“_Run_,” I whispered to him, suddenly terrified that he might be real this time. “Run, run away!” Hux’s face crinkled in confusion, and he turned and looked behind him, then back at me. Ah yes. That look that I knew very well. 

“Your madness won’t save you. Don’t think I haven’t read your medical files. I know your mind is less than sound. Even our Supreme Leader couldn’t contest that. Perhaps, in light of an unfortunate break with reality, you lashed out and tried to murder someone? Or caused destruction to some part of the ship, and had to be locked away? Or even… put down…” I _ should _ have been horrified because this was clearly him stating his intent to kill me, in retrospect. But I knew his backstory, so I laughed. Nevermind that wielding his history against him was probably part of what landed me here in the first place. Cognitive reasoning wasn’t really happening for me, at that moment.

“Isn’t that same _ exact _ tactic you used against Captain Cardinal? When he dared to accuse your little dog Phasma of conspiring with you to murder your father? Which you actually told him about yourself, right? Like an asshole?” This time, he smacked me in the face before he jabbed me with the electrified object, and he held it there, and Christ alive it hurt like fucking hell. But at that point I don’t think I could’ve stopped. Babbling was the only way to fight back. “At least this time you’re accusing someone who’s actually crazy! When you have no evidence ‘cuz you’re accusing the innocent, that usually helps your case.”

“_Innocent _?? You’re spinning lies even as we speak! Making it all the more clear that you intend to sow discord and corrupt the leaders of the Order. Did you think I wouldn’t catch on? I cannot be so easily blinded by your wiles as Ren!” He was almost spitting, he was so worked up. He was so, so, SO mad. Then I thought I heard a little shout from behind him. I gasped for breath, looking all around for the little boy. But he wasn’t there. I was beginning to lose track of what was real and what wasn’t, in a much more serious and sudden way than I had so far. For obvious reasons, I think. When I looked back at Hux, he was walking over to the hub full of buttons and instruments. That did not bode especially well, for me. My head sagged.

“Kylo is gonna cut your fuckin’ head off,” I muttered. I didn’t know if that was true or not, of course, but it seemed likely enough. He dealt with a lot of people that way.

“Don’t you worry your pretty head about him,” crowed Hux. “You know, I doubt he’ll let you leave once you’ve proven yourself useful to him. He’s letting you believe you can, but has he promised you anything? Do you think he’d waste his time training you just to let you go home?” That struck me hard, right in my paranoid gut. _ Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh, no. Hux is a shitbird, but then again… so is Kylo Ren. _ I heard something zap behind me, and I winced and lifted my head back up, waiting to see what awful thing Hux was going to prod me with next.

There stood Matt, in his gray jumpsuit and huge glasses, looking at me. I stared at him wide-eyed.

“Don’t give up, Aeon. Don’t give up!” he said to me, clearly very upset.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, completely horrified.

“I won’t leave you.”

“No! No, stay far away from here! He’ll kill you!” I shouted.

“_Whom _ are we talking to now, traitor? A vision of one of your co-conspirators, perhaps?” Hux hissed, and came back into my sight holding a much larger metal thing than before, and this one had a fucking _ laser _ running down one side of it, like a laser-edged knife. Somewhere, my brain registered that I should be panicking. But I couldn't feel anything but anger, and the idea of him torturing Matt as a co-conspirator really, really, REALLY pissed me off. 

“Fuck you,” I replied to the redhead, and I spat in his fucking face. Oh yeah, I could still feel pain, too. I found that out when he sliced me across the cheek with the laser blade in response. It felt like a white-hot razor, so hot that it might’ve cut a groove into my cheekbone, I wasn’t sure. It fucking _hurt_, much worse than the electricity had. I was too weak to even cry out, at that point. I felt a hand on my chin, lifting it up, and I fully expected to see a snarl on Hux’s face before he launched into another of his truly insufferable monologues, or cut my throat, preferably the latter.

Instead, it was Matt again. I wondered how Hux didn’t see him, or why Hux wasn’t torturing him too? Then I wondered if his sweet face was the last thing I was going to see before I died. He looked me in the eyes, but my vision was beginning to darken.

“Don’t give up. Use the Force!” _ What? Oh yeah, that. What’s an emotion, again? Can I pick one from the emotion wheel? _

“Force…” I stammered, but my lips had started to go numb.

“What do you feel, right now?” 

What do I feel right now?? Strapped to a torture device, hallucinating the first person I’d really liked in years who I hadn’t even gotten a chance to make out with yet, abandoned by my stupid hot chaotic evil instructor, and probably about to die at the hands of a space fascist before I could become a Force-wielding badass and get myself the hell back home and have the rest of my entire life?

“_Hate_,” I growled, and glared past him at Hux, who was standing before me looking sadistically delighted. He was holding the laser blade, as though ready to cut me again. I wanted to jab him with every single electrically charged object in the room.

“What are you--” He screamed mid-sentence as a barrage of at least a dozen prods flew at him from out of their places in the hub, jabbing and electrocuting him all in unison. I pulled against my restraints hard, and they sprang open!!! I was like, REALLY using the Force this time y’all! Of course, when I tried to exit the restraining table to lunge out and grab the ginger by his pasty white neck, I crumpled to the ground in a heap. My Mary Sue moment was over pretty much as soon as it had started. All the instruments of torture clattered to the floor with me. Hux was letting out an awful howl, and when I tried to look up at him, he was staggering right towards me with his laser blade brandished. _ Welp, I’m toast, _ I thought. _ RIP. _

Then, I saw a demon with a thousand red eyes descend onto Hux as if out of nowhere, and heard the unmistakable hum of a light saber. He screamed, there was an array of loud noises, and I smelled something burnt. As everything fell into darkness yet again, I almost heard a voice calling out to me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :o
> 
> sorry Hux fans, but he's a bad guy in this one xD


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which your patience finally pays off!

I was starting to get tired of coming back to consciousness lying on a bed in the medical bay. It was really getting less and less fun every time, and did not feel particularly badass.

“Fuck,” I swore as soon as I was awake enough to make a word form in my head and then push it out through my mouth. I felt like I’d been hit by a train.

“Aeon Flux,” said a tinny voice. “Welcome back.”

“Gee thanks, Lucky,” I muttered. “Can I leave again, now? Everything hurts.”

“Allow me,” the droid replied, and it came over holding a little gadget of some kind, pressed it into my arm, and pushed a button. I didn't feel whatever happened, but warmth and painlessness began to blossom out from the spot, washing over me very quickly. 

“Oh. Oooh, that’s better,” I sighed. “Thank you.” I glanced around blearily, and when I looked over to the other side of my bed from where Lucky was standing, I saw Kylo Ren sitting propped up in a chair. His head lolled back and to one side, eyes shut, his breath coming slow and even.

“The Supreme Leader would not leave after I checked him for wounds,” Lucky informed me, sounding almost annoyed. “Not until you woke up, he said. Somewhat ironically, he is the one who is sleeping, now that you are awake. Shall I rouse him?” I looked at Kylo’s enormous, slouched figure. _ He looks like a little boy again, when he’s asleep. Like he’s never been so peaceful. _

“Don’t wake him, Lucky. He needs a break. Did he tell you what happened?” I asked, looking back at the droid. 

“I know only that General Hux has been admitted to the starboard medical bay for severe wound treatment, and that the Supreme Leader brought you here claiming that you had been shocked and possibly extensively harmed in other ways.”

“Was I?” I asked it, almost nervous to hear the reply.

“The electrical shocks caused some damage to your skin, slight internal damage to your large intestine and the muscle wall around it, and some nerve damage. All are healing very well. There is going to be a scar on your face from the laser cut, though.” _ Oh, is that all? Organ damage and nerve damage? _ Then again, this was space medicine. 

“Fuck,” I sighed.

“It appears that the shock had no lasting effect elsewhere. Your brain scans have shown no more or less consistency than they had been showing before,” it added. I think that droid was trying to be dry with me. 

“Ah, so same old shit with being crazy, huh?” Lucky didn’t laugh.

“You must rest, Aeon Flux,” it said.

“I get told that an awful lot,” I noted.

“Possibly because you don’t listen,” came a familiar deep voice, and I looked back over to see Kylo waking up and rubbing his neck. He was also _ chuckling_.

“I do so. I practiced exactly like you told me to!” I replied, feigning indignance. Mostly feigning, at least.

“I know you did. Clearly it paid off. I think you gave Hux the shock of his life.”

“Wait-- did you _ rescue _ me?” I was starting to piece my memories back together, but I couldn’t recall seeing Kylo. Only Matt, the little boy, and a demon.

“You very nearly rescued yourself, but yes.”

“Goals for next time, I guess. What happened to Hux?” I asked, genuinely hoping he was dead. Fuck that guy.

“After abducting you, taking you to an interrogation room, torturing you, and threatening to kill you? I took off his hand. He’s exceptionally lucky that’s all I took.”

“He waited until you were off-ship to do it, too,” I murmured, realizing. “He thinks I’m a Resistance spy.”

“Are you?” he asked. I served him _ such _ a look, just then.

“No.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “And don’t say ‘that’s exactly what a spy would say,’ dammit,” I added. He actually grinned. Will wonders never cease?

“I will be along to check in on you later, Aeon Flux,” Lucky said pointedly, and rumbled away. I watched the droid go, suppressing a laugh. When I looked back at Kylo, though, he’d moved the chair up very close to my bed, and he leaned over it, resting his forearms on the blanket. 

“How you feelin’, hun?” he asked. I stared at him. Everything about his demeanor had changed, and now… he was talking, and slouching, and looking at me like Matt did. I opened my mouth as if to reply, but nothing came out. _ Wait, what? What the entire fuck is going on?? _

“Matt?” I asked, not wanting to believe it. Refusing to believe it. 

“Yeah, it’s me. I just had to see you. I was so worried.”

“So, you and Kylo _ are _ the same person?” He shifted uncomfortably, then.

“I’ll be honest, I thought you kinda knew what was going on with us. Because you never asked.”

“What? No! You act _ completely _ different…” Nevermind that I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d manifested in a triplet AU.

“You didn’t sense it with the Force?” he asked, puzzled. _ Fuck. Don’t blow your cover, idiot. _

“Uh, well, y’all don’t exactly leave the same signature. In the Force. If you know what I mean.” He looked quizzically at me. _ Fuck fuck fuck. _ “Like I’m pretty sure the Force thinks you’re two different people.” _ Come on, come on, please buy into my bullshit. Pleeease. _ He was silent, and seemed almost to be pondering the idea as though he’d never considered it. Not knowing if he was about to call me out for being a fraud made me antsy, so I spoke again. “So why is that exactly? I mean, clearly you _ are _ the same person.” He shrugged.

“Yes, and no.”

“What the fuck does _ that _ mean?” I was confused, and scared. I admit it. I was scared. The paranoid thoughts I had been avoiding about him just playing me, getting close to me to manipulate me, compiled with Hux’s assertion that he wouldn’t let me leave once I became powerful enough, all felt like they were on speakerphone in my brain.

“I’m… I share a body with Kylo Ren. Does that make sense? He’s in here. We’re the same physical body, but we’re not the same _ person_.” I eyed him, curious but uncertain.

“Why the blonde hair and glasses?” I asked. “Why the technician gimmick?”

“Because I’m not the Supreme Leader. Kylo is. I’m just a person with an aptitude for fixing things. And I wish I had blonde hair, so I just use a temporary thing to change it. Kylo hates it.” He giggled.

“Why are you both in the same body? And since when?” I pried. _ Is this some weird Force thing? Did I accidentally break the canon and splice him in with Kylo when I got here, or something?? _ He shrugged.

“I dunno. It’s been this way for such a long time.” I stared at him, utterly confounded. Then I remembered something from the olden days, when I used to peruse the DSM to learn about all the other types of brains out there.

“Do you… would you say that you both have different personalities?” 

“Yeah!” he replied, nodding as though I’d hit on something. “That’s right.”

“Which one of you is the original personality?”

“Neither.” _ Wait. Of course… _

“Is the original one Ben Solo?” I asked, almost whispering. Matt’s face lit up.

“Wow. You really are incredible.” I looked at him, not quite able to sort out the implications of having romantic feelings for only one of someone’s three selves. But dammit, he was just being so cute.

“Ben is the little boy I’ve been seeing, isn’t he?”

“That’s what I was thinking, to be honest. That’s what’s so incredible. Nobody’s ever seen Ben like that. I mean, he doesn’t come out much in general and hasn’t for a long time. But you knew he was there even when he wasn’t coming out. You saw him with the Force.” _ My hallucinations are the Force. Well I guess it’s canon now, why not. _ I swallowed, feeling all kinds of unsure. “I’m sorry. We don’t… we don’t tell a lot of people. Almost anyone, actually,” he continued. Now he looked sad. “You don’t have to stay friends with me, if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, Matt,” I whispered, feeling a huge pang of sadness. If there was anything I could relate to, it was hiding your brain-stuff from other people because as soon as they heard, they would flip the fuck out. I reached out and took one of his big hands with both of mine. I pulled the glove off, and behold, there was the glitter nail polish. I brought it up to my face to lay my cheek against it. “I don’t know what to do. I’m… it’s complicated, now. How is it okay for me to be friends with you while I’m being trained by Kylo? How does that work?” 

“About the same as it already was,” he answered, stroking my cheek. “We are different people, Aeon. We will all have our own relationships with you.”

“Yeah but do you all know about what happens to each other? Like, can you all talk to one another? Do you share memories?” _ Seeing as I have a huge fucking crush on you, is Kylo Ren eventually going to know what I look like naked? And wouldn’t that possibly be weird for him if he was my teacher? _But luckily I didn’t blurt that one out. Not the ideal way to admit you like someone.

“We don’t really share memories, though we can communicate with each other. Ben talks to both of us a lot, but sometimes Kylo won’t talk to me. To be fair, sometimes I don’t wanna talk to him either. He didn’t want us to be friends, but I...” He looked a little embarrassed now, and blushed. Even without the blonde hair and glasses, in full Big Bad Kylo regalia, it was fucking adorable. “Anyway. He doesn’t trust anyone.”

“He protects Ben, doesn't he?” I asked.

“We both protect Ben. In different ways.” 

“Ah, okay. That makes sense. But, Kylo did seem to warm up to teaching me, before y’all left the ship.”

“It’s because you were kind to Ben. I made my argument, obviously, but it was Ben who convinced him you were okay. He felt safe enough to peek out at you a couple of times.” Now, he was smiling at me so tenderly that it was my turn to blush.

“When we talked about loneliness, right? I knew he looked different. And it was him making the crystal fly, wasn’t it?”

“Exactly. He was so excited about that!” Damn. That _ all _ made so much sense now.

“I’m… I’m relieved you told me, honestly. I was terrified to bring up how much you look like him,” I laughed. “Except your whole demeanor is different.”

“Pretty sure our resting heartrates are different,” he chuckled. “You’re not mad at me?”

“No. I’m glad you’re here,” I assured him. He smiled that small, sweet little smile at me. “I… I actually saw you, when I was in there with Hux. I saw Ben, too. Ben looked afraid, but you told me not to give up, and that you wouldn’t leave me. And it was you who reminded me to use the Force to defend myself. How did y’all know where I was?”

“I felt it,” he replied softly. 

“You… through the Force?” I stared at him. _ Fuck. He can ‘feel’ me through the Force now? Please tell me he can’t read my thoughts. Is this a Force bond? Does that mean Kylo and Ben can ‘feel’ me too? We really gotta talk about this later, because mindreading is gonna require some bigass boundaries. _

“Yes. I’ve never been able to sense you before. But, we were out planetside, and I knew something was wrong. I knew you were in danger. Kylo was the one piloting, obviously, so I had to kind of push him to feel what I felt, because it was only me who could feel it, I’m pretty sure. But as soon as I did, Kylo put the damn shuttle right back in the air to come help you.” He stroked my face with his hand again. As I started to get the picture, I was in awe, I won’t lie. There was something so unbelievably sweet about Kylo and Matt taking care of little Ben. Even if one of them did it by murder, most of the time… _ Oh God. That has a lot of implications for the whole killing his father thing. You know what, lemme just not bring that up right now. _

“I’ll have to thank him properly, then, the next time I see him. I genuinely think Hux would have killed me.” That thought made me much more than uncomfortable. It put my hackles right up. Was he going to be General, still? How the fuck was I gonna be safe?? More reasons to learn how to fuck shit up with the Force, I reckon.

“He wants to kill Hux, honestly. I talked him out of it.”

“If that’s true, you might be a better person than I am. Then again, you might be a better person than most people are,” I said. _ But also, could you maybe kill him before he kills me? _

“Well, I don’t much want Hux around either to be honest, but there are political reasons not to kill him, mostly his allies and enemies,” he disclaimed, seeming annoyed. “He’s going to be on probation for a while, until Kylo decides what to do with him.” Suddenly, I thought about the hallucination I’d had days ago, just before the seizure. I looked nervously at Matt.

“Um, I just thought about my vision. You remember, the one with Hux?”

“... Yes. I remember.” His face had fallen very concerned. 

“I don’t know if it means anything, but after this…”

“Aeon, your visions have been important in one way or another so far. I know you didn’t tell Kylo about that one, or he would be _ much _ more concerned about it. You should share those things, and not just with me.”

“I’m not in the habit of talking about them,” I murmured, feeling guilty. But I mean, it’s fucking weird to go from being just another crazy person to someone who’s hallucinations count as ‘visions’ that are ‘important.’ I wasn’t convinced that was really the case, anyway.

“Please,” Matt implored me. I nodded.

“Okay.”

“Thank you.”

We were silent for a moment, and I looked down at his painted nails while a bunch of thoughts spun around like a tornado inside my head. Then, I looked back up at him.

“Can we… you know, hang out, soon? Or do you have to go back to the planet first?” His smile came back quickly.

“Kylo needs to go back and wrap things up, but I think we’ll be done with that tomorrow. In the meantime, you gotta take it easy. Kylo ordered it, I simply beg you. Ben also wants you to rest,” he said.

“Great, now all _ three _ of you are pressuring me to take care of myself!” I joked, reaching out to thumb his nose. He pretended to bite my finger, and I laughed. God, he was so cute. Did I mention he’s so fucking cute?

“Please do that. You have a lot left to learn, that right now I _ really _ wish you could have already known,” he pressed.

“True, and I’m serious when I say I’d like to be able to rescue myself eventually. This whole y’all-saving-me-from-everything deal is starting to make me feel like a liability.” And was not very cool or tough, which are things I like to pretend to be.

“See, there you go. Motivation,” he replied. 

“Fair enough. I’ll hear from you tomorrow, then?”

“Soon as we’re back from planetside,” he assured me, beaming.

“Alright. What about lessons with Kylo?”

“That, I don’t know. He’ll have to tell you.”

“Fair enough,” I grinned. “Be safe down there.”

“Mm. And you _ rest _, damn you,” he replied, and stood up as he pulled his glove back on. Throwing me a wink, he walked out of my alcove and made to exit the medical bay. I sighed again.

“Damn. Okay. That worked out a lot weirder, but also a _ lot _ better than I expected,” I muttered to myself, and then laid back down on the bed to follow orders. Electrocution is fucking hard on ya. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you didn't think I meant your SLOW BURN patience, did you? oh no. there is SO much burning.
> 
> i wanna thank a friend of mine who has DID for being my guide through the writing of Matt/Kylo/Ben. i'm trying to be respectful while also knowing that everyone who has it is different, and their experiences are all different, and that i can't convey the entire scope of DID in this one fic. but they've been amazing helping me out!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which trusting your feelings is overrated.

Tragically, Matt didn’t get back to me when he returned from the planet. Because Kylo did. He buzzed me over my communicator, and all but ordered me to stop whatever I was doing and meet with him in the officer’s training hall. Lucky was not entirely pleased, but also was not entirely interested in getting cloven in two by a red lightsaber, so he let me go.

Having almost gotten accustomed to navigating the ship with the help of the map, I managed to find the officer’s training hall a full half hour before I was supposed to be there. When I arrived, I saw that there were other people using the hall, drilling hand-to-hand combat. I walked inside and stood against the wall, watching quietly, totally fascinated. I’m a little bit of a nerd for fight choreography, but I’ve never gotten to actually _ do _ it. I wondered if there was a single person on this ship who wasn’t a ruthless asshole who could teach me to fight. That would be so hype, right??? Kylo wasn’t even trained like these guys were, I’m pretty sure. I’m not talking shit, because he didn’t _ have _ to be. He used the Force, but these people couldn’t. They all looked so fucking badass, drilling with little wooden knives or no weapons at all and slamming one another down onto the mats. 

Speaking of ruthless assholes, it didn’t take long for me to spot a phenomenally tall blonde woman with short hair. Oh yeah. That was Phasma, no doubt. Apparently she’d survived her tumble through The Last Jedi. That was not heartening at all. _ There is no fucking way she doesn't know about what happened with Hux. No fucking way. _

Obviously, because I’m an extremely lucky person, she spotted me, too. Wrapping up her drills with whoever her partner was, she sauntered directly over to me, unwrapping her knuckles as she went. There were definitely blood stains on the wraps. _ She’s trying to flex on me right now. _ Lowkey it was working, but I was more pissed at Hux (and her by proxy) than I was brimming with self-preservation. 

When she stopped in front of me, she was looking me up and down with a smug expression. She was literally almost as tall as Kylo was. Yet again, it coulda been hot, but she was also a psychopath probably. I remained leaning against the wall, but didn’t break eye contact once she made it. I also didn’t talk first. _ Fuck you, you talk first. _

“So, you’re the Supreme Leader’s new little fucktoy, are you?” _ Wow. Strong start. _ I narrowed my eyes.

“Any reason you wanna put me on my back heel right off the bat like that, Phasma?” I asked her. Any sense of (probably very healthy) fear of her I shoulda had was fully replaced by fuck-off. Which I'm pretty sure counts as an emotion. She almost managed to hide her surprise that I knew her name, and lifted an eyebrow at me.

“You’re not very popular around here, did you know that?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Ren’s already diverted precious resources to searching for your home planet, even though it evidently doesn’t exist.” Well, _ that _ was not what I expected. “And, he sent out a team to hunt down one of his precious Jedi rocks, when they should be out finding the last of the Resistance.” 

“I didn’t ask him to do that shit. He’s a very opaque man. ‘Cept when he isn’t, I guess.” I shrugged. I figured it was probably Matt who was looking for Earth, not Kylo. But nobody knew the difference. Which woulda been cute, except now this was happening.

“Men are never opaque. They want to fight, or they want to fuck, or they want to bullshit with other men about fighting or fucking,” she replied. _ Oho? Hostility I sense in this one, hm? _

“With me, he wants neither,” I retorted. Gendered expectations, indeed. Then again, Phasma was from a planet that was in a post-apocalyptic state of ruin. Maybe her culture had gone back to some of the OG gender norms problems. 

“Are you disappointed?” she asked, smiling sardonically.

“Why are you tryna pick on me like we’re in fuckin middle school?” I asked, crossing my arms and planting my feet a little farther apart. (I unconsciously assume power stance when I’m starting to lose my temper, which the people at the psych ward do not love, honestly.) “You’re a grown ass woman. What the fuck do you want?” 

“To see what you’re made of,” she replied, and her face got stony.

“So you want to intimidate me?” I clarified. “Leave me alone, Phasma. Seriously. I’m tired of this shit. I asked for _ none _ of it.”

“Fine,” she said, holding up her hands. “But you’ll have to prove yourself eventually, Aeon. Loyalty is of great concern to the First Order.”

“That’s rich, coming from _ you_.” 

“Is there a problem, Captain?” came a deep voice from behind me. The blonde woman looked like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar for a split second. I felt Kylo approach and stand behind my right shoulder, towering over me, but my eyes never left Phasma. _ You’re soooo tough ‘till this big boy shows up, huh? _

“No, Supreme Leader,” she said coolly. “I haven’t been introduced to your new apprentice.” 

“Because I haven’t introduced you. Now, clear your troops out of this hall.” Damn. That was so icy, I couldn’t help but smirk a little. Phasma looked at him, her expression a better mask for her frustration than Hux ever managed to build, at least. Wordlessly she turned and whistled through her fingers at the other people in the room, and motioned them all out. She threw me one last unpleasant look before she walked away. 

“What was that?” Kylo asked me as the last few officers made their way out.

“What, Phasma? I dunno, she just came up and starting talking shit at me. I was just standing here watching everybody fight, minding my own damn business.” He eyed me, seeming uncertain.

“She has no reason to do that.”

“Um, you sure ‘bout that? ‘Cuz her and Hux go waaaaay back.”

“I’m aware of their history.”

“Are you aware of how they worked together to murder Brendol Hux? Who was Phasma’s benefactor, the reason she got off her godforsaken planet in the first place, and our favorite sniveling ginger’s _ father _?” I looked at him pointedly, and his brow knit. 

“I thought that was a discredited accusation. How do you know it’s true?”

“How do I know anything?” The Force, obviously. Not meta-knowledge because I’m from another universe. Nope. “All I’m sayin’ is, given recent events, she ain’t my number one fan.”

“Hm.” Kylo frowned deeply. He was clearly turning this over in his mind, but he turned towards the center of the room and beckoned for me to follow him. So I did. “Alright, Aeon. Today we begin with self-defense. I just want you to stand here, for right now. You have your crystal?” 

“Yeah,” I said, reaching into my shirt to pull out the necklace. I’d managed in my boredom to improvise and make a necklace out of a boot lace. “Should I hold it?”

“No, you can wear it. I want you to think back to what happened when you were with Hux.”

“You mean, when Hux _ kidnapped _ me and _ tortured _ me?”

“Specifically when you used the Force to electrocute him.” I rolled my eyes. Trying to get Kylo to behave or speak in a semi-compassionate manner was probably not a hill I needed to die on.

“Okay. What about it?” 

“Just think about it. Remember it. How it felt.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about that, thank you very much, but I tried. It was a pretty intense hatred, to be honest. So intense, it made me uncomfortable now. Rolling in fresh off my anger with Phasma made it seem easy to just run into that feeling, and start to get drunk on it, and I didn’t want that. Way too much time in therapy for that shit.

“Does that have to be what I think about?”

“It’s the most successful your Force use has been so far.” As if that explained everything. _Oh, sorry coach, I forgot that getting really fucking pissed is one way to use the Force, as if you aren’t a constant fucking reminder. What if I wanted to try literally anything else? Because I have like, I dunno, personal values?_

“I see what you’re doing, here, yanno. Trying to teach me that anger and hate is what makes me powerful. I get it. I got the Dark Side memo.” Now, Kylo started to look angry.

“Do you want to be safe? Do you want to get home? Do you want these lessons?”

“Yes!”

“Then shut up and do what I tell you to do. I want you to deflect the objects that are about to come towards you.” 

“What obj--” And then a fucking rock whacked me in the head. Hard. _ Where the fuck did that come from?? _ I looked all around the training hall for the source of such a thing, but then there was another one! I ducked just in time to avoid a second head-whack. "FUCK!" I shouted, barely dodging two more. _ Are they even real?_

"Use the Force! Not your legs!" Kylo shouted, but I was in the middle of dodging the next one.

"You're just trying to piss me off!" I accused, and it was fucking working, of course. "Stop it!"

"I said use the _ Force_!" he bellowed, angrily. Why was I surprised that Darth Tantrum was a terrible teacher, again??

"Fuck you!" A rock knocked into my shoulder, and I growled. _ That's gonna leave a bruise. This is so fucked! _ I tried to think of something other than sending a rock flying right back at Kylo's head that would consist of using the Force and maybe achieve my goal of not getting hit by any more rocks. But more of the goddamn things kept flying at me, making it incredibly hard to think.

"Go ahead! Throw one back! What are you afraid of?" he shouted. _ Are you serious? Is this the playground?? _ Why did the training hall bring out everyone's inner middle school bully? Unfortunately for them, I didn't get bullied in school. I was too fucking loud, and too fucking angry.

"GO TO HELL, ASSHOLE!!" I screamed, and another rock was flying at me so fast that my only instinct was to turn around and let it hit me in the back instead of the chest. When it landed, it landed _hard. _I yelped and feel to my knees, immediately curling up with my hands over my head like it was a tornado drill. All the middle school experiences were coming back, I guess. 

"GET UP!!" screamed Kylo. "GET UP AND FACE ME!!" But I was done. I curled in tighter, waiting to get pummeled with more rocks. My heart was racing, my whole body vibrating with adrenaline. "COME ON!!"

"I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here," I started to chant. I felt like my brain was vibrating, like I was going to explode. I have a tendency to chant the same thing over and over, when I reach a certain level of completely fucking overwhelmed. Not the same thing every time, but whatever’s handy in my brain at the moment.

"You can't just hide from the people who want to hurt you!" Kylo was saying loudly. "You have to fight back!" 

My head was full of emotions, full of insults, full of cutting remarks. But the only thing I could say was "I'm not here," over and over again like a broken record, like my brain couldn't remember any other words existed. _ I'm not here I'm not here I'm not here I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not _

Suddenly, there were dozens of voices all around me, whispering and laughing. ** _You're trapped. You're alone. You're weak. Give up. I hate you. You were never strong enough. You can't get anything right. Why don't you just lash out? Why don't you just hurt him? Just hurt him like everyone else hurt you. Accept that you're a bad person. Who cares? You're never going home anyway. You won't--_ **

"Aeon?" came a voice, strange and soft like a child's. Around me all the voices continued, and somewhere in the back of my head I knew they were a hallucination. The fucked up thing about hallucinations, though, is even when you know what they are, they're still horrifying. I was frozen, unable to respond.

“Aeon?” said the voice again, and I heard someone sit on the floor beside me, not touching me, not too close. Slowly, I managed to push myself to at least turn my head and look. What I saw was Kylo, sitting on the floor with his knees bent and his arms wrapped around them, looking at me with big, sad eyes and a worried expression. I stared at him, still unable to speak, still feeling like I was vibrating from my guts outward. He lowered his head, almost shyly, hiding most of his face except those eyes behind his knees. “I’m sorry he did that.”

Fuck. I was talking to Ben. Or rather, Ben was talking to me. I blinked, trying to find words.

“I’m… I’m not.... I’m not I’m not,” I said, and God I fucking hate it when this happens. Like, honestly it was kind of bizarre that I’d held out when Hux was fucking electrocuting me for so long. Yet right now, in front of Kylo (and Ben), the words part of my brain got stuck on repeat. 

“It’s okay,” he said softly. ** _He’s trying to trick you,_ ** came a voice. I shook my head, like I was trying to shake the voices out of it.

“I can’t… I can’t… I’m not. I’m not I can’t. I can’t. T-t-t-talk.” Okay, that was three more words than I’d had before. Progress?

“You don’t gotta talk, do you want some fizzpop?” he offered, lifting his head. “I like fizzpop. Maybe they have some you can have.” _ What? Okay... _ I shook my head at him.

“I can’t… I’m not. Not… drink. I’m, I’m not thirsty,” I managed. “Th-thank you.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think they have any in here anyhow,” shrugged Ben, nestling his chin between his knees and letting one of his hands fall to the floor where he started to draw circles with his finger. “Do you hate Kylo now?” he asked, seeming sad.

“N-no…” I said. ** _Yes you do,_ ** said a voice. _ Shut up, asshole, _ I thought at the voice. _ Hold the fucking dialectic. People can be more than one thing. _ Ben seemed to brighten at this a little.

“He doesn’t hate you. I promise,” he said. “He just… he’s afraid somebody will hurt you again. So’s Matt. They don’t want me to come out but I was sad because you’re sad.” _ Oh, wow. _ My heart felt like it was breaking a little, and I wanted to cry. For a lot of reasons.

“Th-thank you, Ben,” I said softly._ Do not cry, dammit. _

“Do you want me to make the crystal fly again?” he asked. “That’s fun.” Oh, he was trying _ so _ hard to make me feel better. I started to smile, just a little.

“Um, sure.” I pulled the bootstrap necklace up over my head, and held the crystal out in my hand. Its light was faint and tinged with a reddish cast. Instead of taking it, Ben just smiled and it flew out of my hand, soaring up towards the vaulted ceiling of the training hall and doing huge loops and whirls and corkscrews in the air. I watched it, the smile breaking out to new parts of my face, and I felt my eyes watering. _ Ugh. Fuuuuck. I’m gonna cry. _But my heartbeat was slowing down, and the voices all around me started to get really quiet. Finally the crystal wound its way down back towards me, like a leaf curling towards the ground on an autumn wind. I held out my hand, and once again it set itself down gently.

“See that was fun!” he said, smiling. “Did you like it?” I looked back at the crystal, which had shifted to a slight purply hue, then back at him.

“Yeah,” I murmured, and reached up with my free hand to wipe my nose and my face where water had started to leak out. “Yeah. I liked it.” Slowly I hauled myself up to a sitting position, mirroring Ben’s with my knees up in front of me. 

“Kylo said he’s sorry,” he told me earnestly. _ Of course, he won’t fucking just say it himself, he has to push Ben to say it for him. Fuckin’ classic Kylo. _ But I pushed aside my irritation, and nodded. 

“Okay. Thank you.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I left it at that. He smiled back at me, and then he brought up his hand close to his face and he waved his fingers at me.

“Okay. I gotta go,” he said, seeming pleased. I waved back, and it’s impossible to describe how suddenly his entire facial expression fell, morphing back into the face of someone who frowned and scowled and got angry a lot, even though it wasn’t doing any of those things now. His hand fell to the ground to prop him up, and the arm that was wrapped around his knees slid up to simply rest on them. He was looking at the ground, away from me. For a long moment, I just sat there and breathed very slowly and very deeply, gripping the crystal in my hand. It took me a moment to realize that none of the rocks that had been hurdling at me before were lying around on the floor like they should’ve been. I swallowed, and looked up at Kylo.

“Did you make me see those rocks with the Force?” I asked him quietly. I wasn’t trying to start a fight. I was just curious, and exhausted.

“Yeah,” he replied, his voice returned to its low rumble. He still didn’t look at me. “Looks like you’re not immune to me anymore.” It was genuinely fucking with me that he _ wasn’t _ gloating about that. Like, hello? He’d been soooo mad that he couldn’t use the Force on me before. I took in a deep breath.

“Can we… can we talk boundaries, about that?” I asked, not exactly hopeful he’d find that agreeable. But he looked up at me, then, his brow wrinkled.

“Like what?” he asked. _ Wait. Is… what? Okay. Fuck. _

“Um, no reading my thoughts. No peeking on my memories. No trying Jedi mind tricks, or whatever.” Now he raised his eyebrows, as though slightly surprised.

“You’re not gonna ask me to not throw rocks at you anymore?” he asked. It was almost like he was joking around...?

“Well, I might be ready for that one day,” I replied. It was almost like I was joking back, I guess. He nodded a tiny little nod of acknowledgement. I think that was him agreeing to my boundaries?? But I needed to make sure. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated, looking back at me through his eyebrows. Being on the other end of that gaze was always a slightly rattling experience, but he was looking at me now almost like an equal. Or at least _ not _ like a subordinate. _ You know, it’s kinda fucked up how I’m really attracted to Matt being so cute and shy, but I’m also really attracted to Kylo for being… scary? Not scary. Intense. But he’s also kind of a terrible person. But also, fuck. _ His eye contact was getting under my skin a little, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. If getting involved with Matt was probably a bad idea, getting involved with Kylo was a _ much _ worse one. 

“Can we practice something else tomorrow? Something like… more chill? Like just moving objects around?” 

“Yes. We’ll practice in here again, though, the space is larger.”

“Alright. When should I be here?”

“0800 hours.” _ Ugh, fuck me. _ I nodded, sighing.

“Alright.”

“You can go back to the med bay, now. I think you’ve been through enough for today.” Every time he said that, it sounded an awful lot like _ he _ was the one who was ready to be done. Not that I would have disagreed with him, especially this time around, but still. Kylo was the fucking king of classic projection.

“Yeah,” I muttered, and pushed myself off the floor and back into a standing position. Everything ached. Lucky was gonna be so mad. I pulled the crystal necklace back over my head, and hid it under my shirt. I looked out the window into the hallway, and I swear I thought for a second that I saw Phasma standing there, staring at me like a fuckin weirdo. I glanced a little nervously back at Kylo. “Um…” I started, but when I looked back at where she’d been, she was gone.

“Hm?” he responded. _ Well, now I feel crazy. Not that that’s unusual… _

“If I have any more, uh, encounters with Phasma, should I--”

“Let me know. Immediately,” he instructed. For once, his sharp tone did not seem at all directed at me. I nodded in enthusiastic agreement. _ Hell yeah, if there’s anybody I wanna have at my back against that motherfucker, it’s this motherfucker. _

“Yeah. I will.” He walked with me out to the hallway, and for just a few minutes our paths ran together. It was a little awkward, as I wasn’t sure what to say and my brain felt slightly fried, and I hadn’t quite forgiven him for being such a dick. But at the same time, I felt like maybe we should be walking together? Master and apprentice-style? Like, I dunno, pretend you like me just a _ little_. Maybe not. Maybe that was just more wishful thinking. We came to a split in the halls, and he stopped and looked at me. His expression was much less overtly angry than usual.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said briefly.

“Yeah.” And he turned, and walked the opposite way from the medical bay. I caught myself wishing he’d said something else, like ‘have a good night’ or something, stupid as that sounds. I sighed, and turned to head back to my unofficial second home on the _ Supremacy_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried to keep to my posting schedule i really did.... BUT I GOT TOO EXCITED
> 
> don't worry, more Matt fluff is coming to soothe the Kylo angst :3


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt makes some plans.

Damn, that day had gone much worse than expected, but at the same time Kylo wasn’t being an absolute dickhead with me. Just most of one. That alone felt real fuckin’ weird. Acknowledging my attraction to him to myself also felt weird. Weird and/or bad, all around. It was dark in my alcove when my datapad buzzed. I was awake, obviously, my brain a vortex of rumination. I looked at the message.

**You up?** Oh, thank God. Someone I wanted to talk to.

**I can never sleep in this med bay. **(Not that I slept especially well anywhere, but.)

**Can I come see you?** Um. Yes. Obviously.

**Please do.**

**Okay. I’m on my way. See you soon. **I slid the datapad back onto the bedside table, and sat upright on the cot. I wrapped myself in my blanket, and fidgeted with my crystal while I waited. When Matt arrived, he didn’t bother ringing the bell.

“Hey,” he said quietly, shuffling into my alcove. His slouch, his blonde hair, his goofy glasses were all such a welcome sight that I felt my shoulders start to sag, trying desperately to let go of even a tiny bit of tension. _ Never fear, an angel is here! _

“Boy am I glad to see you,” I told him. I patted the end of the bed with my hand, because fuck that stool. He climbed onto the bed, his long calves dangling off the side.

“Me too, hun. How you holdin’ up?” he asked, and he turned his torso a little more towards me, which made me smile. _ Great, now I’m overanalyzing his body language to make sure he might have a crush on me. Cool. _

“Not great, honestly.” That might’ve been the understatement of the year.

“Today’s lesson went that bad, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. It was a fucking nightmare.”

“What happened?” For a second, I wanted to say _ Shouldn’t you know? You were technically there. _ But then I remembered that’s not how it works.

“Um, well, short version is that Kylo was a huge asshole, I flipped my shit, then Ben came out to try to make me feel better.”

“I know Ben pushed to come out. I was trying to stop him, just because I wasn’t sure what was going on. But he’s always been stubborn.” He shook his head fondly. “He came out to help you?”

“Yeah,” I replied, smiling. “He tried to offer me fizzpop, and he made the crystal fly around again to make me laugh, which was really fuckin’ cute, and he wanted to be sure I didn’t hate Kylo. He also told me Kylo said he’s sorry, apparently.” I rolled my eyes. 

“Wow. I’m shocked you got an apology at all, even if it was through Ben.”

“Lowkey me too, but I’m still kinda mad about it.”

“That’s okay. I would be too. I assume Kylo came back and Ben didn’t just start wandering the halls?” he asked. I chuckled at the idea of Ben, but in grown ass Kylo body, wandering around the ship looking for fizzpop. That was kinda cute.

“Nah, Kylo came back. Apparently y’all can use the Force on me now. Which, that reminds me, I need to ask you the same shit I asked him about some boundaries for that.” Matt canted his head in that precious way of his. 

“Like what?” _ Wow. That was uncanny. _ Okay, sometimes they were similar, Matt and Kylo. But only in the most passing ways. 

“No reading my thoughts. No peeking around in my memories. No Jedi mind tricks.” I stuck out my hand. “Kylo said yes. Shake on it?” He stuck out a big hand and shook mine. It was warm, and I wanted to hold onto it, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how many times I could hold his hand before I made it weird. _ I’m proud of you, _ said the Voice Of Reason. _ Yeah, I wish you weren’t, though, _ I thought. 

“Of course, hun. You said _ Kylo _ agreed to those rules, too?” He seemed more surprised than he had about the apology.

“Yeah, I thought it was fuckin’ weird too. I think he might _ respect _ me. Well, respect might be a strong word,” I chuckled.

“Mm. I dunno. He’s not great at showing respect, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it.” Matt raised an eyebrow at me, with a little smile on his face. _ Whaaaaat_. Kylo even partially respecting me was a little too weird to process. Especially since I hadn’t even remotely used the Force, that day. I just fell over on the floor.

“Well, he agreed to dial it back tomorrow for our lesson, anyway. What about you? What have you been doing?” I asked, changing the subject and smiling.

“I haven’t been out since I saw you in here last. So I haven’t been doing a damn thing, except hanging out with Ben and looking forward to seeing you.” He blushed, and smiled back at me. _ UUUUGH!!! _

“Aww, well I’m sorry I don’t have anything more fun to report.” I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, then let it fall back into my lap. “Wait. You weren’t out much before you met me, were you?” He shook his head.

“No, not much. Kylo fronts the most. He’s getting a little more rest, nowadays. I think it’s good for him,” he told me.

“I feel like you take care of Kylo, too.”

“I try to. He doesn’t much like it, though.” Matt laughed.

“I… well. I accept it better than he does, but I didn’t used to. I guess I relate to him that way. Always tryna be tough.”

“Maybe he’ll learn from your example.”

“Uh, doubt it, but you never know.” _ Miracles can fuckin’ happen I guess. Redemption might be in his arc, after all. Not that I would know. _

“So, can you tell me about your home planet?” he asked suddenly, brightly. I eyed him. I felt like Ron Swanson in that episode of _ Parks and Recreation _ when somebody asked about his home address.

“Why?” 

“I’m just curious. You’ve only talked a little bit about it before.” I shifted uncomfortably. The cat was already out of the bag that he was looking for it, and pissing his subordinates off in the meantime. But he didn’t know I knew that, of course. _ Fuck_. 

“Uh, it’s small. And blue, mostly, with some green. Some deserts. Huge variety of weather, wildlife, cultures.” Suddenly my brain played the original Star Wars credits in my head. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… “It’s… not super accessible.”

“Why not?”

“I, um, well, y’know, we just don’t really like other people. Not big on visitors.” Fuck. This was already a disaster. “It’s kind of a backwards place.”

“Huh,” he replied, surprised. “I wouldn’t expect you to come from a planet like that. You’re not very… backwards.” _ For you, darling, I could be, _ I thought. For the record, that was a sex joke. _ Shut up, brain. _

“Um, thanks,” I mumbled awkwardly, kinda laughing. “I think. But, yanno, just had to, uh, get away. Still wish I knew how I’d ended up _ here _, exactly.” That, at least, was true.

“You really don’t remember do you?” he asked. I side-eyed him.

“No. I _ really _ don’t.” 

“I don’t mean I didn’t believe you before. I just thought maybe your memories might’ve come back by now,” he disclaimed. “I thought maybe I could help you get home.” _ Aw, okay. Just go on being cute, I guess. _

“That’s sweet, Matt, really. But I don’t know if you can,” I sighed. “I don’t know if it’s… findable. Maybe it’s in another galaxy, even?” That seemed like a viable option. There had been extra-galactic people in the old canon, after all. They were horrifying and tried to take over and were unable to be affected by the Force, actually. _ Oh, shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone with that cover-up. _

“Oh, wow. I never thought of that. How could you have possibly ended up all the way here from another _ galaxy_?” His eyes got wide. 

“If I remembered, I could tell ya,” I joked wanly. He looked at me and sighed.

“Well. If I find out otherwise I’ll let you know.”

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“Yeah, but. I want to.” He said that a lot. For once I wished he wouldn’t, but there was nothing I could do without blowing more holes in my story. He was the only person on board, apart from Lucky Sevens, who didn’t think I was completely insane. To be honest, crush aside, I wasn’t willing to lose that. 

“Thanks.” I chewed my lip, uncertain what else I should even say. Changing the topic was hard when the only thing I _ wanted _ to say was ‘do you wanna make out?’ 

“Can I help you some other way? I mean, I figured the clothes were pretty much a basic necessity. But I mean, well. You know.” He blushed again. _ Holy shitting fuck godammit. _ “I just wanna be a good friend.” 

“You’re a great friend, Matt!” I assured him. “You’re wonderful. Please don’t worry about me. I don’t wanna depend on you for fuckin’ everything. That’s not fair. Plus, you kinda aren’t all that… available.” I shrugged. Kylo sure had a lot of killing people and stalking Rey to do, after all. I knew he was still working on that, even though he never talked about it. 

“I mean, I know. And you can totally make other friends! But, I mean. I dunno. I feel like I have a lot of resources and I wanna use them to make you more… comfortable?” He had turned fully to face me while he was talking, pulling one leg up onto the bed while the other dangled down still. 

“I’m… I dunno how comfortable I’ll ever be on this ship, Matt. You already help me so much, just by spending time with me. I thought about making new friends before, but I don’t even know where I’d go to meet people!” _ Like, do storm troopers have dive bars? Do I really want to befriend some normie storm trooper, and if I do, do I really wanna meet one at a bar? I shouldn’t be drinking, anyway. Wouldn’t they just be needling me for info about Kylo? Would it make Kylo look bad if I went out schmoozing with the peasants? _

“You could go anywhere! You could, uh, have lunch in the officer’s mess. Maybe go to a lounge, or uh, the fitness center? Or go down to the pools and find out when they play water grav-ball, like I told you about,” he mused, and it was painfully clear that he didn’t actually know how to socialize on this ship. It’s not like he really could, anyway. It would be just about as effective as the actual SNL skit had been, prolly. But gosh, he was trying, bless his perfect heart. And technically I guess I could go all those places, but I had a feeling Kylo's fuckin' reputation might precede me, yanno? 

“I won’t lie to ya, eating lunch in the officer’s mess sounds like sitting all alone in the cafeteria when I was in second grade. The one boy who came up to me and wanted to be my friend turned out to be a self-identified incel, but like the scary kind, down the road.” I grimaced. _ He doesn’t know what an incel is, dingus. _ “And I dunno where Hux is these days, but I know for a fact that Phasma doesn’t fuck with me. I ran into her earlier, too. Before my lesson.”

“Shit,” Matt said, frowning. “I don’t actually know where Hux is. I mean, he might be in reconditioning, but you’d have to ask Kylo. He’s not acting General, I know that much. Phasma, though. She’s a beast. I’ve seen her. When I have to front as Kylo. That used to be a lot easier when he had the mask.” 

“Yeeeeah. She’s a fuckin’ traitor, too. Her and Hux both. Big time. I don’t trust them, and I’m not just saying that ‘cuz I saw that one vision, either.” It’s actually ‘cuz I read the damn book about her, but whatever. I shook my head.

“Don’t worry about that, then. I don’t know how often she actually uses any of the nicer accommodations for higher ranking officers, but uh, avoiding her isn’t a bad call. I’m sorry. I wish I knew what to do.” He seemed sad that he couldn’t help. He pouted, sticking out his bottom lip. It was so fucking cute, I wanted to squeeze him. 

“It’s okay, really. I’ll figure it out. I wish I could get out more. I don’t, uh, _ remember _ any planet ‘cept Earth.” This time I actually did remember that I was supposed to have forgotten everything! I was learning to lie. Hooray…?

“You mean, you’ve never gone out planetside?” Matt asked, and I saw this mischievous light come into his eyes as he grinned a mile wide.

“Uh, nope,” I said. _ Oh, my God. Is he really… _

“I can fix that,” he whispered conspiratorially. My eyebrows flew up. _ Holy shit. Fuck! I wanna go on a planetside date with Matt! Even if it’s not a real date… _

“Really?” _ OHMIGOD! Wait. Fuck. _ “Hang on, is that a good idea?” I asked, as I recalled suddenly that Matt and Kylo shared a body and this seemed like something Kylo would absolutely veto. Like, with his light saber. Cut the entire idea completely in half. 

“It’s totally fine! We can pretend I’m Kylo taking you out on some kinda mission or something!” He was getting excited, gesticulating with his hands. “We’re heading to Fondor next, but it’s mostly just a production planet, and that might be a risky trip anyway. I think after that, Kaller is on our trajectory, if you wanna go somewhere really fun!” I’ll be honest with y’all, most of me was internally SCREAMING at how fucking stoked he was, how he was clearly plotting all kinds of fun for me. But a small part of me was like…. Oh fuck. Now that it seemed possible I would get to leave the ship, did I really want to??

Who am I fuckin’ kidding. I totally wanted to. Even though it was absolutely gonna be the riskiest thing I’d done since accusing Hux of necrophilia. I like to live on the edge.

“Um, how much fun are we talkin’ here, Matt? Like, can we go small town? Just a lil, yanno, waystation type thing? Please no city-planets.” My brain was conjuring up images of Coruscant, which was like a five-dimensional New York or some shit, and I wasn’t a fan of cities half as large as NYC. Much less a whole goddamn planet.

“I was thinking Kaller because it’s got enough culture to be new and fun! But nothing _ too _ overwhelming,” he assured me, but somehow the profoundly impish smile on his face just wasn’t that convincing. But holy shit he was so. Fucking. Cute.

“Okay, so what’s Kaller like?” I asked, starting to get excited. I couldn’t seem to remember that one from the nooks and crannies of the canon.

“We’d be stopping in Plateau City, which is a beautiful place. Not huge, but still busy enough to be full of places to go, and food, and an amazing market! Kalleran jewelry, armor, and hidework are mostly what they’re known for. You wanna go?” He was looking at me like a golden retriever again, and like my ‘yes’ was the treat he’d been promised for doing his trick. At that point he could've told me he was gonna drag me through the lava on Mustafar and I would’ve consented enthusiastically.

“Alright. I’m in. Let’s do it.” Just when I didn’t think his face could light up any more than it already had... 

“Yes!! Maker, this is gonna be so fun!!” he squeaked, trying to hush himself in the late-night quiet of the medical bay by putting his hands over his mouth. I just smiled at him like a fucking idiot. 

“Okay, okay, you convinced me. But my life is in your hands, Matt!” 

“It’ll be _ fine_, Your Dramatic-ness,” he teased me, rolling his eyes. “This place is lowkey, as you say all the time!” Something about him borrowing millennial slang from me made me lol (see what I did there? No I won’t apologize for that joke), and then I had to cover my mouth to keep quiet too.

“When is this whole expedition gonna go down, then?” I inquired. 

“It won’t be for a week or so. We have a couple stops between here and there.”

“Fine, I’ll await your signal, then. You’ll talk to Kylo about it, right?” I looked at him, feeling a pang of concern that he was gonna try and skip Darth Tantrum’s approval and just hijack the pilot’s seat for the day. I was _ not _ trying to make shit difficult for anybody, especially not me. And being Kylo Ren’s pupil was more than difficult enough without adding extra toppings.

“We’ll work it out. I’ll push him a little, if I have to.” He seemed confident enough. I gave him a look that hopefully said ‘If you piss him off you know I’m the one who has to deal with that, right?’ He gave me a look back that I think was trying to say ‘Trust me, you worry wort.’ I narrowed my eyes, and stuck out my hand with my pinky out.

“Pinky promise,” I instructed. He looked extremely, adorably confused, of course.

“What’s that?” 

“Just gimme your little finger!” He seemed dubious, but he raised one of his hands and pushed out his champagne-pink glitter pinky nail (now predictably chipped) out towards me, trying to copy my gesture. I grabbed his pinky with mine and shook it. “There. Pinky promise.” He took his hand back and looked at it curiously.

“Well, that’s new,” he commented, grinning.

“It’s an Earth thing.” I smiled smugly at him.

“That’s what I assume about every weird thing you say, hun. Which is a decent amount of things!” he chuckled. I stuck out my tongue at him, which only made him laugh more, which was exactly what I was going for. _ Fuuuuuck I adore him. I’m so tired. But I don’t wanna sleep. Then again, if he doesn’t sleep, Kylo is liable to be FUMING all day tomorrow, and I don't need that shit. _

“Okay, I hate, like _ really _ fucking hate, to be the responsible one right now, but you should scoot off to bed, Matt. Your body has to wake up pretty early tomorrow, and so does mine,” I lamented. “I could talk all night. Literally. My brain is trending real fast, these past few days, and you’re my favorite person to talk to. But I gotta talk to Kylo tomorrow, and I’m tryna do the right thing, here.” _ In so many fucking ways, too, _ I thought. When I said ‘you’re my favorite person’ his face turned pink and he looked away from me, and bit his lip just a little. See me not making out with Matt? Where’s my award? Or my grave, honestly. Not making out with him was gonna kill me before Hux got the chance to try again.

“Well, I mean. Yeah. I would talk all night too. To you, I mean. But, um, you’re right.” _ Ohhh myyyy Goodddddddddd. _As if that wasn’t bad enough, then he reached out to my face where Hux had cut me with the laser dagger. It was almost healed, still mostly new pink scar tissue and a few patches of dark webby healing material running from my temple down to my upper lip. He ran his thumb over it softly, sweetly. “You’re healing up pretty fast. The more you rest, the faster, though.”

My skin was sparkling under his rough hands that touched me so gently. I shivered just a little, and looked at him, trying to think of words to say out loud that didn’t include ‘will,’ ‘you,’ ‘kiss,’ or ‘me.’ It took me a second.

“Yeah, I mean. You’re right.” Okay, that was... good. He smiled a soft little smile, and then his hand fell away and he slid off the bed with a sigh. 

“Take care, hun. I’ll see you soon, mkay?”

“Yeah. I’d like that. Sleep well, Matt,” I replied, giving him a little hand-wave.

“You too, Aeon.” And he ambled out of the alcove, turning back just before he vanished around the corner to throw me a little smile that made me wanna die, in a good way. I curled up on the bed, still wrapped in the blanket like a burrito, and blushed and giggled at nobody. Sure, I was bummed we weren’t making out. But if nothing else we’d get to have a fun day together, just us, soon. I imagined us in some idyllic market in Morocco or Vietnam (since I had no fucking clue what Plateau City looked like), running around like a movie montage of the Perfect Cute Day Between Two People Who Were Definitely Not In Love, Nope, Absolutely Not. It bled into some sweet dream as I fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did i think i would want to stick to a schedule? here's some Matt fluff, which is totally a setup for some MEGA Matt fluff that's coming...
> 
> just out of curiosity, how long do you like a slow burn to last? i already know whenabouts this one will start to catch fire, but i'm curious. since it's part of the plot, but there are a lot of dynamics at play. thanks everyone for reading :D


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now with 100% more bad ideas!

I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say I continued showing up to Force Lessons With Kylo. We met every day for the next five days, and I was starting to get the feeling that he was actually invested in teaching me. Mostly because he didn’t just throw shit at me again, or try to bully me into getting mad enough to body-slam him one more time. We like, sat down and started working on making shit float.

I know, it sounds so silly, right? But I was starting to actually get why Yoda had made Luke do it so much in that swamp. It took a fuckload of focus, and I wasn’t always abundant with that myself, but Kylo always told me to focus on _ him_. And frankly… that wasn’t very difficult to do. Either because he was pissing me off, or…

Okay. Do not judge me. Kylo might be a shitbird, but he’s so fuckin’ hot. It’s uncomfortable just how hot he is. Like, lowkey I was starting to _ want _ him to choke me, a little. I wondered if it was mania, pushing me towards Extremely Bad Choices, or if I would’ve felt that way anyway and mania was just making it harder to ignore those impulses. Regardless, his behavior _ was _ actually improving overall. He still managed to get on my nerves regularly, but. Anyway. I was also getting back to thinking that I was a bad motherfucker, since my skills with making shit float appeared to be recovering from prolonged electrocution very, very quickly.

“Now, send them towards me,” Kylo was saying, as I stood on the opposite end of the training hall from him lifting six hunks of metal (mostly discarded droid parts). Just like I had the day before, I slid them all through the air between us, and they stopped about three feet away from him. “Now, back to you.” Back they came, all at once. “Now try to send them, but start each one at a different time. You have to control them all separately.”

“Fuck,” I grumbled, brow furrowed as I tried to look at all of the objects at once. This was where I’d fucked up before. Two of them started to waver.

“At me, Aeon! Not the stuff. Look at _ me_,” he reminded me sharply, and as soon as I looked at him, the objects steadied themselves again. Even from across the goddamn training hall, his eyes were boring holes into me. For a second I just shivered a little from the eye contact, my heart rate picking up. But then I started to feel that feeling I’d had in the interrogation room, like I was sensing the energies of everything around me. The details weren’t there, but I could _ feel _ each of the scraps hanging in the air. 

_ One, two, three, four, five, six. _ I sent them all off one by one, and they all stopped in the same order, in the same place they’d been the last time. Nice.

“Now, back towards you.” In reverse order, they slid back to me. 

“Faster this time.” 

_ One two three four five six. _

“Faster.” 

_ Onetwothreefourfivesix. _

“Faster!” he urged. I felt my breath hitch, and back towards him they went, and then back towards me, until they were just frantically pinging back and forth like they were inside a pinball machine.

“Now stop!” Midair, they all froze. Our eyes were still locked, and my breath was coming a lot faster now. Did I see a drop of sweat on his forehead? _ Fuck, _ I thought. _ This is way more... intense than I expected. _ For a moment, we just stood there like that, staring at each other, slightly… winded. Yeah, winded. That’s the word I’ll use. Finally, Kylo broke the silence. “Your control is getting much better. Do you think you can deflect them?”

“Like, if you chuck them at me?” I asked. I really shoulda been more concerned that they were real objects, not just Force-rocks, this time. But I was filled with a probably-grandiose certainty that I could totally handle it. In answer, he sent one of them flying towards me. But it wasn’t all that fast, so I casually tossed it aside. One of those almost-smiles came over his face, except this was more like an almost-smirk._ Jesus, don’t look at me like that. Or, do. Oof. _

“Yes,” he confirmed, belatedly. Another one came flying at me, faster this time, and I sent it clattering off to the right. The rest started to move, slowly winding around under the vaulted ceiling of the training hall. I was still looking at him, and my heartbeat got even faster, because holy shit. It was starting to feel real, like real actual hunks of metal were about to come flying towards me at any moment. And I didn’t know which one, or from where. I felt the temptation to try and break eye contact with him and look at the metal bits as they drifted around, but I remembered this time. Or, possibly I might not have been capable of looking away. Not sure which, honestly.

“Alright,” I challenged him, feeling real cocky. I felt one of them break from its lazy path and come whizzing towards me, fast, but I bumped it away from me and into the ground. _ Motherfucker, try me, _ I thought, smirking. The pause was longer this time, which drove me a little nuts, but when that fucking hunk of droid came at me I bounced it up and away, hearing it land on the floor behind me with a satisfying clang. Then, I got an idea.

I kept looking at Kylo, but more than that, I had started to sense the line of energy flowing between him and the last piece of metal as it hovered. Then I realized I could feel the same line of energy flowing from the metal to _ me_. It occurred to me that those lines were always there, but maybe only those who could perceive the Force could actually… manipulate them. Which meant that, even if Kylo was gonna fling a rock at me, I didn’t just have to defend myself. I could divert the flow of that energy, redirect it. Like playing football, a fuckin’ interception. They have those in football, right? 

So when it finally came at me, fast as hell, I sent it spinning upwards towards the ceiling-- and then right back towards him, just as fast. It was so unexpected that I saw his eyes go wide and his body freeze as it stopped barely half a foot from his face. I let it hover there for a second before it clattered to the floor. Our eyes were _ still _ locked, and now we were both obviously panting, tense, the energy now having nothing else to arc between but our bodies. 

_ Fuck. Was it good for you too? _ (But that joke implies that either of us was feeling satisfied, which was the exact opposite of what was going on, I’m pretty sure.)

“How was that?” I asked, and I felt like my limbs were vibrating. I swear under any other circumstances he would have been scowling, angry about being surprised like that. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t exactly clapping his hands with mentorly delight, either. Mostly he was just staring back at me, and I couldn’t honestly read his expression. I just knew it wasn’t Big Mad.

“Good,” he said, and finally blinked. “Impressive.” _ Wow. What the fuck? Hold everything. Did Kylo Ren just actually compliment me? Not almost-compliment. Not sarcasm. Like, actual compliment? _ I swallowed hard.

“Thanks.” I wondered if I’d ever had an easier time just accepting a compliment, the way I’m always trying to.

“Which feeling were you using to reach out to the Force?” he asked. I froze. _ Is that motherfucker trying to get me to confess how turned on I am right now? _

“Um. Confidence,” I lied. Of course, the way I’d been feeling lately, desire and confidence were so very intertwined. Kylo narrowed his eyes at me.

“Curious.” That sounded like disbelief. 

“Why do you ask?” I pried.

“Normally I’d just look into someone’s mind to find out, but you asked me not to do that.” _ Oh. Okay. Respecting my Force boundaries. Cool. That’s cool. Stop making me think you’re cool. We both know you still like Rey, anyway. Not that I’m jealous, or anything. _ I might’ve been a tiny bit jealous. Which is stupid as hell, because I didn’t even ship those two. I don’t want Rey to have to put up with Kylo’s bullshit, she deserves better. So why would being jealous make sense?? In my defense, wanting to fuck someone isn’t the same as wanting to date them. In the game of Marry, Fuck, or Kill, Kylo was a strong Fuck. Matt was a hard Marry. I didn’t want to kill baby Ben, though, so at that point the analogy falls flat I guess. I managed to nod.

“I did. Thanks.” Kylo nodded back, then took a deep breath.

“Well.” Ah yes, he was just as good at dealing with Awkward Boners as I thought. Not that he had a boner, that I was aware of…

“Should we, uh, move on to another lesson?” I suggested. He cleared his throat.

“Yes, we should. Come sit.” He gestured towards the mats, and we both walked over and sat down cross-legged facing one another. I left some space, though, because I still had some sense of self-preservation, which I was clinging to. “There’s a very unique interaction between two Force-users," he began. _Yeah, I'll fuckin' say,_ I thought. "If you’re responding to something that’s not being manipulated by someone else, the way you sense it might be different." 

“Isn’t the connection between the objects always there, though? Including the people involved?” I asked. I mean, wasn’t that the fucking idea of the Force? That it was ever present and connected everything?

“Yes,” confirmed Kylo. “But what do you think made that connection so easy for you to spot, just now?” I chewed on my lip, thinking about it. Boner jokes aside, I’d been aware that the object was coming towards me eventually. Because…

“Your intent?” I looked back at him, and he nodded. _ Aha! _

“You could sense that I was planning to throw it at you, even before I confirmed it.”

“But couldn’t I technically sense _ anyone’s _ intent if I paid enough attention? Even if they weren’t using the Force themselves?”

“That’s exactly my point. Especially if you become very aware, you’ll feel the Force all around you, all the time. The energy flowing through you, entering and exiting, in and out, over and over again.” _ Um, is the Force your dick? _ Even though I was remembering how I’d felt just before my seizure and just now with the metal pieces, and I knew what he meant, that sentence was just too ripe with innuendo. _ God why is my brain trying so hard to fuck everything up, today? _

“How do I do that?” I asked him. “Feeling it all the time like that sounds like it might drive me crazy, and I don’t need any more help with that.”

“You get used to it,” he assured me. I wanted to roll my eyes, but I mean, shit. That’s exactly what happened when I learned I had to be lucid of my symptoms all the time, scanning for them constantly just to take care of myself. I just fucking got used to it. I sighed.

“Okay. Is there some kinda exercise I could do to, um, get better at it?”

“Pay attention to how you feel. How it connects you to everything around you, even if the feeling is weak or you don’t act on it. Everything from a cup, to a droid, to a person, to a planet. Meditate often.” _ Yikes. _ I’d never stayed with the meditation habit. I’d do it for a few months, then either get too maniacally ambitious or too depressed to keep it up. _ At least here I have nothing better to do most of the time. _

“Are you… does your anger connect you to everything?” I asked him quietly. “You don’t have to answer that,” I added quickly, because it was an innocent enough question but I was forgetting just how fast Kylo could fly into Big Mad. He regarded me curiously.

“All your emotions connect you to everything. The connections you’re most aware of, when it comes to using the power of the Force, are unique. It pays to choose what works best, though I can’t stop you from choosing something else.” He was starting to sound like a good teacher, which was almost too weird to fathom. I pondered this for a moment, running my finger over my bottom lip. _ Does anger work best for him because it simply works best in general, or is it just his belief that it works best that reinforces its efficacy for him? _ I was edging into looping, layered, philosophical territory with that one, like my brain was ready to start spiraling into the grand Patterns of the Universe which was a recurring trend in my manic-thoughts. That wasn’t always a bad thing, but I threw on the brakes. Now wasn’t the time for that shit. _ What’s practical right now? _

Well, I really didn’t wanna be so fucking mad all the time. I just finally got to a point in therapy where I realized I was feeling better, in general, than I had in ages. Getting mad all over again felt like I wasn’t just stepping backwards, but slipping on a patch of ice and tumbling back down a hill to land smack into a neighbor kid’s snowman.

I looked up to say something to him, but what I saw made me freeze immediately. I’m not sure how I didn’t just scream and scramble away, because it was demon-Kylo again. He was sitting there, normal except for the growing shadow of his face full of a thousand red eyes. I held my breath and stared at him, terrified but for once able to tell, fully, that this was another hallucination. _ Oh my God. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. It’s not gonna hurt you. _

“Aeon?” he asked, in what sounded like a thousand voices. “What’s wrong?”

“Y-you…” I stammered, trying to make words. “I… I see…”

“What do you see?” His voice(s) seemed calm enough, for a demon. I swallowed, forcing myself to release my frozen breath very slowly. 

“Are you angry at me?” I asked, very quietly.

“What? No,” he replied, seeming surprised. “Why do you ask?”

“I, um…” How do you tell someone they’ve morphed into a terrifying fucking demon?? This was NOT in the handbook.

“Take your time, Aeon.” _ Well, that’s awful nice of him_. I took in another breath, slowly. The demonic face shifted and altered just a little all along, like it was made of living smoke.

“When you get angry,” I began carefully, “Sometimes I see a vision of you as a demon. I’ve… I’ve talked to Matt about it before.” A thousand eyes stared at me, and he was silent for a moment.

“Matt seems to think you see Ben with me, too,” he replied finally. “Is he here now?” 

“No,” I replied, which was weird now that I thought about it. But maybe Ben was resting hard, not even lurking around in the inner cockpit to try and push Kylo into something.

“Just me.”

“Yeah, just you. Are you always angry on Ben’s behalf?” I dunno why that question popped out, maybe because of how Matt talked about them both protecting Ben. It made sense, I thought, that Kylo would get the most pissed off when Ben felt scared.

“No. Just usually,” he replied. Well, that made sense, too. He probably had his own things he got pissed about.

“Oh. I was just, um, wondering.” I couldn’t rip my eyes off of the demon’s face. It was so horrific, but if I looked away I might get even more freaked out. “Do you really think you’re a monster, Kylo?” I was asking all the easy questions, today. He was silent again for a while.

“I have to be.” The eyes were all looking at me, almost like they were curious how I would respond.

“Do you?”

“Yes. I am Supreme Leader of the First Order. My rule cannot be questioned, or it is at risk.”

“Why do you wanna rule, though?” Another silence. I felt like maybe I might be dead by the end of this conversation if I kept pushing it, but somewhere in the back of my head I’d latched onto the idea that if I got to talk through whatever this anger I was seeing was, then the demon head might go away without me panicking and scrambling away like an idiot, or possibly hurting someone.

“Because it’s my destiny.”

“How do you… how did you find out it was your destiny?” I phrased delicately. _ Did he read the script? _

“Snoke forsaw it. I believe my uncle did, too, and that’s what he was afraid of.”

“You think he was afraid of you becoming ruler of the galaxy?”

“Yes.” All the eyes were trained on me now, wide open, unblinking.

“Maybe he was just afraid of you becoming cruel,” I murmured. “But trying to protect us from what could hurt us makes it hit that much harder, in the end, when it happens anyhow.” The relentless stare of all the eyes was unnerving as hell. “I’m sorry, Kylo. I don’t mean to bring up all that shit. I guess I just keep hoping you don’t have to stay this angry all the time.”

The reason I always felt drawn to Kylo, like as a character, before I got plopped down into his fucking plot, was because he was so brutal. His pain was brutal, and he externalized all of it. He took it out on everyone else. My version of that pain was just as brutal, but it was all internal. I took all my pain out on myself. No matter how bad I wanted to fuck up someone else’s day, I never did. Just pointed that shit inside. I guess being around the guy was making it even clearer to me that we were both struggling with being angry, even though I hid my anger about a million times better than he did. That didn’t mean it was gone, or that I knew what the fuck I was supposed to do about it. I just knew I couldn’t let it be the only feeling that I used to connect to the Force, or by the time I got home I’d be a fucking wreck. Or a different person, which is even worse.

I tell y’all all this, because that was what was running through my mind at that moment. I got so lost in those thoughts, when I finally snapped back to reality, the demon was gone. It was just Kylo, sitting there looking at me with the strangest expression. Almost like his guard was down? But not like Ben was there. Just him. I breathed in real deep.

“It’s gone, now. The demon.” _ Wow. That… that was. Different. _ He nodded. 

“How do you feel?” he asked. I looked down at myself, at the now-purply glow of the crystal around my neck, at my hands which were shaking just a little. For once in my life, I didn’t wanna tell him I just felt ‘crazy.’ Which is what I woulda told everybody else, to be honest.

“Better.” He was almost smiling at me, maybe. Or at least, he seemed to appreciate that I wasn’t on the edge of freaking the fuck out anymore.

“Do you want to stop for today?” I was a little too shaken to be totally preoccupied with how weird it was that he was actually being nice to me, asking my _ consent _ for fuck’s sake, but don’t think I missed it. 

“Yeah, I think so. We back tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I have to go down to Fondor to settle something with the shipyards.” He got all stony again, not at me but just in general. I tried not to think about how pretty much any time he said something like that, I knew at least one person was gonna end up dead. “We can resume the day after. I won’t be gone long.”

“Is that your way of saying I can maybe see Matt tomorrow when you get back?” I asked him hesitantly. I didn’t ask Kylo about Matt a lot. Way more the other way around. For obvious reasons. He seemed a little stonier.

“Ask him.” Which is Kylo-speak for ‘yes, but I’m not gonna say it out loud.’ I hadn’t seen Matt since our training had picked up in intensity, only messaged him a few times, which is the only reason I even said anything. _ Like, I know you’re Supreme Dicklord and all, but I miss your alter who is a lot nicer than you. Even though you’re being nice today, for some weird reason. _

“Alright, I will.” We stood up from the mats almost at the same time. “And I’ll practice noticing my feelings.” Fuckin’ therapy all over again, but with space magic this time!

“Good,” he replied, less stony now. “Walk with me a moment,” he added, beckoning with his gloved hand as he turned towards the exit. _ Um, okay? _ I raised an eyebrow and shuffled after him. We entered the hall and he strode along while I tried to keep up. He wasn’t even hurrying like usual, but God he was so fuckin tall. Long legs walk real fast.

“Yes, uh, sir?” I was trying to be respectful in case the officers and troopers who were also in the halls heard us. To be fair, I respected him a little more than I used to, now.

“Hux is being released from confinement in a few days. He’s been demoted to Lieutenant General,” he told me in a low voice. _ Oh, okay. Fuck that. _ “He’s also been ordered to keep a physical distance of at least a hundred meters from you at all times. If he breaches that, you will report it to me immediately. Even if he’s just passing by in the corridor.” 

“Yes, sir,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

“If he contacts you via communicator or datapad, or if he sends a message with one of his subordinates, you will report that to me immediately also.”

“Absolutely, sir.” _ No problemo with that my dude. _

“If you feel unsafe in any capacity, you may report that to me at any time. This ship is your home, right now, and you are my apprentice, and there will be no contestation of my will in matters of your safety.” He was louder, now, as though he wanted all the bustling people in the hall to hear. I barely suppressed a smirk.

“Thank you, sir.” Damn, he was getting my enthusiastic consent, today. _ I’m not gonna call you Master, though. Not unless you ask me politely first. _

“Finally, I plan to have your quarters moved to the officer’s suites this evening. I’ll send someone to assist you with moving your effects within the hour.” I blinked. _ Oh, wow, an upgrade! _ We stopped just before the doorway to a lift. “You are presently answerable to no one on board, or in the entire Order, but me, Aeon Flux. I’m sure you won’t abuse this privilege.” He looked at me, eyes burning in that way they did but somehow even moreso, and I felt my guts do a little flip. _ Oh shit. Big Dom energy happening right now. Right out here in front of God and everybody. But… I’m kinda into it. Oof. _

“No, sir,” I breathed. “I certainly won’t.”

“Good. Now, you can return to your quarters and prepare to move.” The door to the lift slid open, and a couple officers quickly shuffled out of the way. He walked in, and turned around to look back at me with that godforsaken smolder.

“Yes, _ sir_.” The door slid shut and he was gone, and I breathed in real slow. _ Jeez. That was a lot. _ But I wasn’t complaining, exactly. Not after today being a raging fuckin’ success. I turned to march back to my room, and wondered if there would be a tub in my new bathroom or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am a fool for not expecting a less-than-wholesome sexual tension to just... spontaneously arise, here. i really am.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things start to get a little too real.

The person who came to fetch me and my stuff from my little room was not who I’d expected.

“Oh, Lieutenant Mitaka,” I said when the door opened and I saw the mousey guy standing there. He looked a little pudgy, and a little fidgety, but he had a nice face. “Are you here to help me relocate?” 

“Yes, mada-- Aeon, yes, I am,” he said, and his voice was just as pudgy and nice as his face was. He seemed awfully docile, to be working for the First Order. He was surprised that I already knew who he was, but wasn’t everyone? Apparently my desire not to be called ‘madam’ was at least sorta common knowledge now, too. I really hoped that was because of Hux complaining about it at some point, because that would be hilarious. “May I provide you this trunk? For your clothes?” He pushed in a little rolling suitcase thing.

“Oh nice! Thanks, dude,” I replied, and immediately grabbed it and towed it over to the bed where I started to pack it as fast as I could. I was ready to see my new digs. 

“So, um, are you recovering tolerably well from your, um, ordeal?” he asked nervously.

“Oh, you mean when your former commanding officer abducted me and kidnapped me?” I asked cheerfully. He looked uncomfortable, of course, because that was the point. “Yeah, I’m doin’ fine these days. Y’all sure have some solid medical technology on this ship. Very impressive.” I threw my guitar over my shoulder on its little strap, and stood there with my new trunk and my datapad in hand.

“Oh, are these your only belongings?” he asked, surprised.

“Yeah, I didn’t bring much,” I told him. “You prolly heard my visit was… unexpected.”

“Ah. Well, less to carry then. I’ll take the trunk for you.”

“It’s okay, I got it.”

“Ma- Aeon, please, let me carry it. I… well I don’t want our Supreme Leader to think I was neglecting my duty.” _ Oh, I forgot. Everyone is scared shitless of Kylo Ren. Prolly why he’s been so timid around me already. Duh. _

“Okay, buddy,” I said, throwing him a big wink. “I gotcha. Wouldn’t want ol’ Kylo to have a hissy fit, would we?” He took the handle and started wheeling the trunk out, his face looking a little pale as though he was uncertain about agreeing with me too much on that point. I turned and threw up a peace sign before I left. “Bye, tiny room. See ya never!”

“Your new suite is much larger, yes,” Mitaka confirmed. “But it’s the Supreme Leader’s old spot. So it may be a little… drab.” I laughed. _ Is he talking smack about Kylo’s decor? _

“Oh, I bet I know how he likes his space. Real dark and broody, everything’s black, dramatic lighting? A very secret diary under the bed?” I think he laughed a little, but he tried not to. Yes, I was having fun at Kylo’s expense. But lowkey I was tryna get a read on the little Lieutenant, too. He was barely an inch taller than me, so when I say ‘little,’ I’m not kidding.

“I couldn’t say,” he said. “But I’m sure he’s not fond of pink tulle curtains, or anything.”

“Hah! That’s funny. I dunno, though, he could surprise us.” I was thinking about Matt when I said that, obviously. Beautiful, perfect, lil bit girly Matt. Though I liked to think that pink tulle would be too much for him, even.

“Indeed.” He was kinda laughing, I could totally tell. 

“So, Mitaka, did you get a promotion recently? After my whole debacle?” I pried. Of course there was another person I wanted to know how loyal Mitaka was to. His name rhymes with ‘sucks.’ 

“Oh, um, no. I wasn’t in line for that position, thank the Maker,” he replied as he led me into a lift. “I don’t know if it’s been settled yet who’ll finally get that position. Bureaucratic nonsense abounds.” He rolled his eyes. I was starting to like him.

“I assume you agree with his punishment? Not that you’d tell me if you didn’t, of course.” I winked at him again. I was ready to make that guy real uncomfortable if he thought I was to be fucked with. Just in case.

“I certainly disagree with his punishment. I think he ought to be in the brig quite a bit longer,” the man said, and I raised my eyebrows. _ Oh damn! Feisty Mitaka isn’t a fan of the pasty redhead! Fuck yeah! _

“I gotta say, I appreciate that.”

“Well, if he was suspicious, he really should’ve known better than to just grab you while Supreme Leader was offship. And I thought his accusations were outlandish, given the fact that you’ve spent more time in the medical bay than anywhere else since you arrived here.” He shook his head. “I don’t imagine being under Ren’s tutelage is exactly a vacation, for you, either.”

“It… really isn’t. He’s not a patient guy. Though, I think he’s getting better? Maybe?” He looked at me, eyebrows shooting right up.

“Really? That’s difficult to fathom.”

“It might just be like a blip, yanno, like a little thing. Maybe he finally got laid, I dunno. Who knows how long it’ll last,” I chuckled. _ Yeah, right. You wish, _ muttered the Voice of Reason. _ You’re not helping, _ I thought in reply.

“Aeon, I must tell you. It’s a very prominent rumor on the ship that you are his… sexual companion,” Mitaka whispered to me. Just as he finished, the door of the lift slid open and we walked out. I snorted.

“Don’t worry. Phasma informed me of that the other day,” I told him, talking low just in case. “Pretty fuckin’ rudely.”

“Oh, dear,” he muttered. “I’m sorry about that. She’s not pleased with his, um, allocation of certain resources.”

“Yeah, she told me that, too. I was like, lady, leave me alone. I can’t tell that guy what to do. Nobody can.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m not even sleeping with him, anyway. But I didn’t really expect her to like me. Her ginger bestie didn’t, so.”

“Hm, yes.” He nibbled on a fingernail, then stuffed it back into his pants pocket like it was a bad habit he was trying to break. He was such a dork, it was kinda endearing. “Here we are.” He stopped in front of a door.

“Oh _ word_,” I murmured when it opened. This suite was _ way _ bigger than my room. There were two couches, a little tiny desk with a chair, and the bed was beneath a long, skinny window in the back wall. Outside was a planet that was covered in metal structures of some kind. I couldn’t see into the bathroom. _ There better be a FUCKING tub!! I need to fuckin’ CHILL!! _

“We’re in orbit above Fondor, but we depart tomorrow,” Mitaka informed me. He brought my suitcase over to the closet (which was much larger than my old one, too) and started to hang up my clothes. He was very nitpicky and tidy, even refolding some of them before he hung them. _ What a goober. _ I laid my guitar down on one of the couches, and looked around. Everything was gray and black, but the lighting wasn’t as melodramatic as I’d expected. 

“This is pretty nice, man. We totally called it on the decor, though.” I heard him chuckle.

“Yes, about what we expected, I’m afraid. Would’ve been more fun if not.”

“Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.” I wandered over to the desk and opened a drawer, but there was nothing in it.

“There!” he pronounced, proudly stepping back to look at the immaculately tidy closet. I had a pitiful amount of clothing, for that space. “You’re all set up, then. Is there anything else you need presently?” 

“Oh, uh, no. Not really.” I was kinda sad that he was leaving, honestly. I had been enjoying talking a little shit with someone on the ship who I neither feared nor had a crush on. “But thank you very much, Lieutenant. For chatting.” He seemed confused that I’d thank him for something like that.

“Of course, um. Sorry, I never know what to call you, I’m so used to titles around here.”

“Your Radiance,” I told him, grinning and thinking of Matt again.

“What?” he asked, brow knit with both concern and confusion, like he probably heard what I’d said but wasn’t sure if he should take it seriously or how angry I’d get if he didn’t. Poor dude was used to working for homicidal assholes.

“I’m kidding. Just Aeon really is fine.”

“Oh. Alright, Aeon. Let me know if I can provide any further assistance.”

“Wait, what do you people do for fun around here?” I asked him before he could turn around and leave the room. _ Finally, someone who isn’t a jerk to ask about that! _

“Um… well. I tend to go to the Cockpit, which is a little sort of bar, sometimes. On the same level as the commissary,” he replied awkwardly, like he wasn’t sure he should be telling me that. _ Damn, they really missed an opportunity to name a strip club or a gay bar, with a name like the Cockpit. _

“That sounds interesting. I might check it out, later. Believe it or not, trying to lift rocks with the Force all the time gets boring real fast,” I laughed. He smiled timidly back at me.

“Certainly. I must return to my duties, now.” 

“Yeah, I know. Have a good one, Lieutenant.”

“Good day, ma- Aeon.” And he shuffled out like a nervous little beetle. A nervous little beetle with the face of a teddy bear. As soon as he was gone, I ran to the bathroom to see what the deal was.

It was a nice room, to be sure. But there was no fucking tub! Just a larger shower, a fancy one with glass walls and a glass door and a very wide shower head. I groaned.

“Goddammit, Kylo,” I swore. “You fuckin’ spartan ass emo ass little shit bird. I want to take a BATH!!” I sighed, and sat down on the couch. _ Fuck. Nothing much to do, for the rest of the night. I miss Matt. _ That last thought usually happened about fifteen times a day. I decided to shoot him a quick **Hey, nerd** on the datapad, fully aware that he might not get back to me yet. “Do I want to go to that bar?” I asked nobody, rubbing my lip with my finger. I was kinda worn the fuck out, though, to be honest. Maybe tomorrow while the Supreme Dingus was off murdering people. I decided to play my guitar instead.

“_Well my babyyyy, she’s like a little black star, _

_ She’s just like her daddy, way yonder far, _

_ She’s just like her daddy, way yonder far… _”

I stopped, suddenly realizing that I’d forgotten the next line. I hate when that shit happens! But I just started over, which usually jogs my memory. 

“_Well my babyyyy, she’s like a little black star… _” 

I couldn’t even remember the next _ chord_. And that wasn’t a complicated song. _ Fuck. Okay. New song, I guess. _I decided to go with an old one, that I’d heard since I was a little kid.

“_Hello cowgirl in the sand, _

_ Is this place at your command? _

_ Can I stay here for a while? _

_ Can I see… _ ”

My fingers made some awful noise on the strings as I landed on a blank space where my memory of the song used to be. _ What? What the fuck is the line? It has to rhyme with ‘while,’ why the fuck can’t I remember it? _ I was starting to panic a little. I tried to picture my dad singing it when I was younger, which is how I’d learned it to begin with.

My heart started to race. I couldn’t remember what my dad’s _ face _ looked like. I saw arms holding a guitar in my mind, but nothing where the details of his face used to be. And almost none of the song.

“Shit. Fuck. Shit. No. This can’t be happening!” I looked down at the fretboard, horrified. I could remember how to make chords, but I was forgetting all kinds of details. I tried to sing yet another song, without playing this time, and got halfway through before I couldn’t remember anything else. _ Fuck. No. No no no no nonononono! What the fuck!!_

I almost threw the guitar off of me, running to the big bed that was now mine and curling up on it with my hands balled into fists. It was fucking awful, y’all. It was the worst I’d felt in such a long time. I started to sob into the soft black sheets. 

“No. Please. Please come back… I can’t. I can’t forget you. _ Please_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little short one for y'all before the next hit of Matt fluff...


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are still bad coping mechanisms in space.

Cut to: me lying on my bed still, in the same position I’d collapsed into hours ago, lost in a fog. I don’t actually know if I slept at all, or how long I laid there. I felt like I was made of lead, but my guts were hollow and could collapse at any moment. It was the kind of nearly catatonic I hadn’t been since my last super fucked up depression. My thoughts had spun around in circles until I’d just dissociated from them entirely, overwhelmed with horror and disbelief. Every time I tried to figure out why I couldn’t remember something, I’d panic and start crying again. The fact that there was no fucking day or night, so no sunup or sundown, really didn’t help. 

The thing that brought me back to some kinda-awareness was the sound of my datapad pinging. I didn’t want to move, but I didn’t want to miss something I could get in big trouble for, either, so I crawled outta bed to go pick it up off the couch where I’d left it.

**Hey, wobbles. You want to hang out tonight after Kylo gets back from planetside?** I blinked at it. _ Oh fuck. It’s Matt. I meant to message him yesterday. Oh, I feel so awful. I miss him so much, he’s the only thing on this fucking ship that makes me feel better. But I don’t know if he can help with this. I don’t wanna bring him down... _

**What time?** I replied.

**Won’t be until late, maybe 1900 hrs. I can come to your new room!** _He’s so cute._ I sniffled, and wiped yet another tear from my red eyes. _He’s so sweet to me. I feel like a miserable potato. What the fuck am I gonna do?_

**Ok.**

**You okay?** Wow. Even in space, people get nervous when you type differently than usual.

**I’ve been better. Sad about home.**

**I’m sorry you’re sad. I’ll come cheer you up?** _Whaaaaaaa._

**You don’t have to if you don’t want to.**

**I messaged you first, silly. Of course I want to.**

**Alright, I’ll see you then.** I sighed.

**Take it easy today, okay?**

**I will.**

**Good. See you soon.** I didn’t even reply, I just put the datapad on the desk and wandered over to my closet. I wanted to pick out a nice outfit to wear for Matt, at least. I didn’t want to bother showering or over-grooming like I had been, though. I didn’t even know if I wanted to see him-- well really, if I wanted _ him _ to see _ me _ . I was fucked up, y’all. Like I’d dropped right outta the sky, from New Rey Who Dis to Nothing Matters And Everything Hurts in less than eight hours. I pulled a pair of trousers down from where Mitaka had folded them so scrupulously the day before, and changed into them. Weirdly, there was something in one of the pockets I could feel. _ What the hell is that? _ I stuck my hand in, and was surprised to pull out the fucking candy Matt had given me a while back. You know, the one he said made you _ euphoric_? 

One guess what I decided to do that day. 

\-----

When my doorbell chimed, I was laying on the bed with my head dangling off the foot of it, giggling to myself.

“HelllooOOOOO,” I shouted at the door. “Come IIIINNN!” When the door opened, I thought _ Oh man it’s so magical how that door just opened right when I told it to! _ And then I laughed way more than I should have. Matt came in wearing a short sleeved black t-shirt and black pants and his goofy glasses, but I was too busy laughing at myself to pay attention to how hot he looked for a minute.

“Um, hey there, hun,” he said, sounding very surprised to see me in such a state. “How you feelin’? Better?”

“I feel _ terrible!_” I laughed. His brow knit with concern.

“Then why are you laughing?” he asked, approaching the bed slowly like he was trying to size me up. 

“I took the _ thingy_,” I told him in a harsh whisper, like it was some kind of terrible secret. “The candy thingy, I ate it!” 

“Oh, good grief,” he groaned as he realized what I meant and put his hand on his forehead. “Okay, I’m still concerned about you, but I admit I feel better now that I know why you’re laughing like a maniac when you just told me this morning that you’re sad.”

“I’m so sad. I don’t even know what to do! So I ate the thingy. I missed you so much!” I cried, lifting my head up and twirling myself around in a totally ridiculous and excessive way so I could sit and face him. I stuck my hands out towards him like a baby reaching for their mom. “I missed you all week. This week was crazy. Kylo was really nice to me!” He chuckled at me, and reached out and took both my hands in his as he stood by the foot of the bed. I let out a tiny squeak. _ Ohmigod! _

“Kylo was nice to you, huh?” he asked, and he kinda waved my hands around in the air a little.

“Um yeah, he was really nice to me. I saw him change into a demon but I didn’t even run away, and he talked to me and I didn’t mean to bring up Luke or anything but he didn’t get mad and then the demon went away! Isn’t that crazy!!!” I tried to pull him towards me, but he was heavy. Too heavy for my under-developed arm muscles. He stood there, smiling at me like he thought I was fucking adorable.

“Wow. That’s pretty impressive, Aeon. I’m really proud of you,” he said, and my face turned bright pink I’m pretty sure.

“Oh wowie,” I whispered. He just laughed, and sat down next to me on the bed, still holding my hands. “Why are you sooooo nice to me?”

“Why? What kinda silly question is that? Because you’re my friend,” he replied. I was liking how much he was chuckling at me a whole lot, so I resolved to make that keep happening.

“And you’re _ my _ friend. My best friend on the whole ship! I might be friends with Mitaka maybe,” I informed him. “He helped me move my stuff. He thinks Hux should still be in jail,” I added, once again in my fake whisper, giggling. Was that kind of a reach for the single interaction we’d had? Maybe, but euphoria likes to assume the best.

“Oh, Mitaka, huh? I didn’t know he wasn’t a fan of Hux,” Matt mused. “He seems nice.” I couldn’t tell if he was actually happy about this or not. He didn’t seem jealous, though. More like protective than anything.

“He’s nice! I think he’s nice. I dunno. I also think he’s gay, which is GREAT! Also I did a bunch of crazy shit with the Force this week!” I said, my brain hopping away from the intense sadness I’d been feeling in favor of making broad assumptions about Mitaka’s sexuality and then making Matt smile and laugh and say nice things. Drugs are bad, y’all.

“I actually might have pushed around in Kylo’s memories to find out what you’d been working on,” he admitted sheepishly. My eyes flew wide open and my mouth made a little ‘o’ shape. 

“Ohmigod! You bad boy!”

“I just wanted to see your progress! I didn’t snoop on your conversations. Kylo’s hard to snoop on, anyway, he’s very guarded. You’ve been moving a whole lotta stuff around in the air, is all I know.”

“Oooooh you’re bad. You naughty thing. I won’t tattle on you though. You’re my friend.” He was blushing real hard. I was talking to him like I was a five year old, and at no point did any Voice of Reason enter my brain. I shook his hands around excitedly when I remembered that I was still holding them. “I did make a bunch of stuff fly though yeah. I did real good. Almost like I’m getting the hang of this Force shit.” 

“You’re a marvel,” he told me, and his eyes were so sparkly. Being as high as I was, I just squeaked again.

“Oh gosh,” I murmured, and I swung my head over and then let the rest of my body follow it to land on the bed, still holding his hands. He laughed. _ Wow oh boy oh wow. Wow I like Matt. I like Matt so much. _ “Oh gosh, you’re really nice.” 

“I try,” he chuckled.

“Matt, I’m sad,” I remembered suddenly, frowning up at him.

“Why are you sad, fierce one?” he asked, face going all soft. _ Wow did he just call me that? _ My heart thudded in my chest.

“I can’t remember stuff. I forgot some songs I’ve known for like ever. I can’t remember my dad’s face. I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t remember stuff about Earth.” I started to feel a strange emotion, the weirdest feeling you get when you’re sad but also on a drug that increases hella dopamine in your brain. I swallowed, wondering if I would cry or not. Matt’s face looked suddenly very worried.

“You’re forgetting more of your past?” he asked, brow knit behind his big glasses.

“I guess,” I replied, shrugging. _ Oh no. _Was that a tear I felt going down my temple? Turns out it was, because Matt let go of one of my hands to reach over and wipe it with his thumb. 

“Oh, no. That’s awful,” he murmured. “Shit. I don’t know what to do about that.”

“You don’t gotta fix it, I don’t think you can anyhow,” I said, looking down at where his other hand was still holding mine, forlorn.

“Maybe it’s temporary?” he offered, starting to pet my head. _ Oh, wow. That’s… that’s reaaaallly nice. _ My eyes slid closed, and my whole body tingled. 

“Mmmm,” I shrugged, thoughts beginning to rustle and want to jump elsewhere. “Maaaaybe.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” he cooed. “Don’t worry. I’ll help if I can.”

“‘Cuz you’re the best ever,” I murmured, smiling without opening my eyes. “Matt, using the Force with Kylo feels funny. Can’t you use the force, too?” 

“Yes, though I often don’t.” His hand slid away from my head, and I pouted and opened my eyes. “What’s that for?” he asked about my stuck-out lower lip, giggling at me.

“I forgot already,” I told him, having seen his face and gotten totally distracted from whatever I was supposed to be pouting about. He laughed again, and then I laughed. “What did I just ask you?”

“You asked me if I can use the Force. Which I can. I just don’t do it a lot,” he recounted patiently. 

“Why not?” I asked, cocking my head to the side in a very exaggerated version of what he always did. He shrugged.

“I don’t really need to, much. Why do you ask?”

“Just learning from Kylo feels weird. He said the connection is unique. I dunno what that means though.” Meant I was uniquely horny after class, mostly. But I wasn’t even about to tell Matt that, despite being high as balls, because I didn’t even really wanna think about it myself.

“Oh really? Like weird how?”

“Just like, the connection, because we were both using the Force on the same rock or whatever. Like, look.” I glanced over to my datapad, and without even really trying it lifted up into the air. Matt gave a huge grin. “Now you move it!” I instructed him.

“Why?”

“Just trust me!” He looked at me, then back at the datapad. It didn’t move. “No, silly. You look at _ me _, when you do it,” I scolded him, giggling like it was goofy that he didn’t already know.

“At you?” He looked at me, our eyes locking. Suddenly I felt the datapad starting to wind in a big, slow circle in the air. I smiled, not breaking eye contact, and pushed back on the datapad, spinning it the other direction. “Hey!” he laughed, and pushed it back the original way. I giggled, but the longer our eyes stayed connected, the more I felt like I was vibrating from the inside out. I could feel a torrent of energy, but this time it didn’t have to arc through the air between us-- it just sizzled through us in an endless loop, connected by where his hand still held mine. Away from us, the datapad was spinning itself and slowly getting faster. I tried to say something, but no words were happening. Nothing even came to mind. His face seemed a lot closer than it had before, though. I could count his eyelashes.

Then the datapad was sinking back to the desk, and Matt closed his eyes and sighed. He leaned back away from my face, but he didn’t let go of my hand. When he opened his eyes, I slowly started to realize what had just happened yet again. _ Fuck. Seriously? We’re just gonna keep doing this? We’re adults, dammit. We can make out if we want to! _

“You’re really high, did you know that?” he asked me, letting out a rueful chuckle.

“Oh,” I replied, recalling the entire English language in one fell swoop. “I’m not _ that _ high.”

“Your pupils are huge, hun.”

“I’m fiiiine,” I assured him. “I’m just, I wish I was wearing other clothes. This shirt is really nice but it’s so stiff right now!” Suddenly I bounced up off the bed, and he let go of my hand as I danced over to the closet to pluck out one of the long sleeved shirts that was for storm troopers. Apparently I’d grown tired of fancy clothes for the evening.

“Are you--” Before he could ask the question I’d already flung off the offending shirt, and Matt turned bright red and whipped his blonde head away from me. “Maker, Aeon, you gotta warn somebody before you just do that kinda thing,” he mumbled. I just laughed and pulled the much softer shirt on delightedly. “Are you done?”

“I’m changing pants. No peekin’!!” I giggled at him, and mid-turn he jerked his head back away from me again and towards the door. Then I totally just pantsed the nice trousers and pulled on a pair of the softer trooper regulation pants. I gave no fucks. “Ohmigod this is soooooo much better. I shoulda showered but it’s too late. Why the fuck don’t you have a bathtub in your old room????” 

“I dunno, there wasn’t one when we arrived. I tried to get one put in the whole time I was here. It just never happened,” he laughed, turning back to look at me again, his blush barely fading.

“Matt. I need-- nay, I _ deserve _ to relax a little. I’m not real good at it, I need a lotta help, okay? Tubs? They are a big help!” I bounded back to the bed, hopping on and sliding over to him. Boy, did he look gorgeous. As always.

“I’m terribly sorry, Your Radiance. If it were in my power I’d get you one immediately, but it isn’t, I hate to say. There’s a lot of plumbing involved, and our maintenance crew just isn’t prepared for that,” he said, but he was starting to chuckle through his words. 

“You’re bullshitting me, aren’t you?” I asked him, folding my arms in front of me. “You big meanie. I thought we were friends!” 

“We are _ totally _ friends, hun,” he laughed. “I just can’t use the Force to build you a bathtub. I didn’t study long enough for that.” He reached out to boop my nose, which made me blush. 

“Okay, fine. One day I’ll forgive you,” I mumbled, but I was smiling, too.

“I will waste away here, awaiting your mercy,” he replied melodramatically, throwing one hand on his chest and his head backwards. He is so FUCKING cute. I giggled, and blew air on him to see if he would fall over. Because he is a good and wonderful cinnamon roll, he totally went along with it and his torso collapsed the rest of the way backwards onto the bed. I laughed like a little kid. He laid there, hand still on his chest, eyes closed. One eye peeked out at me, though, and I pointed and laughed before it closed again. 

“You’re alive, goober,” I accused him. “You can look at me now. I know your seeeeecret.”

“Oh, okay,” he sighed, opening his eyes again and grinning at me. “You’ve found me out.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“No, you’re right, I’m really not.”

“That’s not a complaint, though. I think you’re the most wonderful human on board. I wouldn’t want you to lie to me.” He blushed again. 

“Maker,” he murmured. But before he could say anything else, I went full pre-K and spontaneously started to tickle him. In retrospect I wonder if this counts as healthy regression? “AAH!” he yelped, and started to giggle uncontrollably and wriggle. “No! Fuck! Anything but that!!”

“I gotya!!!!!!!” I crowed as I dug into his armpits. “Not so big now are ya, you bad boy?” He was laughing too hard to respond, and I started to laugh with him-- until he turned the fucking tables on me, the sly devil!!!

“Now who’s bad? Huh???” he asked, reaching up to tickle me right back mercilessly. I squealed and tried to wiggle away from him, but... not _ that _ hard, honestly. 

“NoooooooooooOOOO ahhhh!” It was getting full-blown sleepover cute in there, as I cackled and wheezed and slapped at his hands. “You can’t! You cheated! Stoooop!” 

“Not until you admit I won!” he laughed at me.

“What! Never!!!” Did he know who he was tickling right now???? I would NEVER surrender!!! His hands danced from my ribs to the insides of my elbows to the backs of my knees, and I yelped every time he changed tickling locale.

“Say it!!! Say I won!!!!”

“Noooo!!!”

“SAAAAY IT!!!!”

“OHMYGOD FINE YOU WON!!!” I yowled, and finally he stopped tickling me and I panted to catch my breath while he laughed at me, leaning over my face with his elbow on the bed propping him up. “Next time, you fucker. I’ll get ya.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” he said, smirking like he didn’t believe me at all. Nestled under his arm, though, I didn’t care I’d lost. I mostly felt like I’d won, actually. He was so close that we were touching all along the length of my body, and I looked up at him with a laugh still lingering on my face while he looked down at me. One of our signature pregnant pauses fell. _ God. There’s no way I can keep this up. _

“Matt,” I whispered, nervous as hell.

“Yeah?” he asked, sweet and unsuspecting.

“Matt… Matt, I like you.”

“I like you too!” he replied cheerfully. Clearly he did not get it.

“No, I mean like I _ like- _like you.” His brow furrowed.

“I like-like you, too. Friends usually do that, don’t they?” 

“Noooooo ugh. Matt.” Wow, this was frustrating. No silly grade-school coding in space about the difference between one like and two likes. How else was my regressed mind supposed to communicate?? “Nevermind,” I huffed, looking away from him and putting a hand over one eye and cheek while I turned red from embarrassment. 

“Aeon,” he laughed. “It’s okay.” 

“Is it??” I asked him, waving my hand around. “Is it really okay because like, I know you’re not him or anything but Kylo is Supreme Leader and everyone is already spreading rumors and I thought maybe it was a really bad idea but you--”

“Hey, hey,” he said, cutting me off gently and taking my flailing hand with his. _ Oh. It’s so warm. _ “Whatever you’re talking about exactly, we should probably talk about it sometime when you’re _ not _ high on Namana candy, okay?” I huffed, then stuck out my lower lip to pout again. _ But I wanna make out NOW, _I thought.

“Okay,” is all I said. Even in that state, I knew he was right. If I wasn’t able to bring this shit up when I was sober, then chances are I wasn’t going to be making good decisions about it, either. Obviously. Not to mention how respectful of him it was to not take any sort of advantage of my impaired judgement. He smiled at me so sweetly, though.

“Besides, you should go to bed. It’s back to your lessons tomorrow, isn’t it?” he asked. That was the LAST thing I wanted to hear. I pouted even harder.

“I’m not sleepy,” I declared. “I want a donut.” 

“A what?”

“A donut! Fried dough. With lots of sugar. You don’t have donuts in space, do you?” He chuckled at me.

“No. Though, by the sound of it, I wish we did. Are you hungry?” 

“Yeah.” I frowned. “I think I forgot to eat today.” His face fell very dramatically. 

“What?! Aeon, you make me crazy, did you know that?” He slid up off of the bed and immediately went over to my datapad to order food. _ Wow, okay, Mama Bear Matt. You’re the cutest ever. _

“Wait! What are you getting?” I asked, sitting up to look after him.

“I dunno, but something,” he murmured. “And water. You’ll need water after eating that candy.”

“I’m fiiiine,” I assured him, flopping back over. He just clucked and shook his head at me.

“Food is en route. I’m gonna hide in the bathroom when it gets here, though, just to be safe.”

“Okay, stinky,” I giggled at him.

“Do I smell bad?” he asked, suddenly looking worried and sniffing his arm. I laughed.

“No! I’m just kidding. Playin’ around.” 

“Oh. Okay, wobbles,” he laughed at me. “What did you do all day?”

“Um,” I said, trying to remember. “I walked to the commissary. I got more soap, I think? A nice droid showed me how to get back to my new room. I looked at stuff on the datapad but I don’t know what it was, now. I talked to myself a lot. I dunno.”

“Maker,” he murmured, rubbing his forehead again. “Next time you decide to do drugs, please let me know so I can chaperone you? If word gets back to Kylo that you were wandering the halls high, that might not be great.”

“Kylo is a big stinky head,” I pronounced. “Who needs to have more fun.” Matt was barely hiding his laughter.

“I’m sure he does. You seem to be helping with that, though?”

“Pffffffffft. I try. S’not easy, though. He’s always Big Mad. Maybe he should take a candy thingy.” Now there was an idea! Give the big angry boy happy drugs! What could go wrong?

“If Kylo takes it, we all take it, remember? I think that might be more stressful and confusing for him than fun.” Matt shook his head. I honestly liked the idea of getting Matt this loosey goosey, though. Perhaps he could confess some feelings about me? I sighed.

“Okay. That’s fair.” Faster than I’d expected, the food arrived and I honestly forgot what it was, I ate it so fast. I drank the whole glass of water too, to appease my caretaker.

“I toldja you’d need to eat.”

“I did it. I maintained homeostasis.” I puffed up my chest. 

“Yes, you did. Great job. Now will you go to sleep, hun?” he asked as he took my tray and set it down on my desk for me. I let out a huge, unnecessary sigh. 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” I groaned. “I guess I’m sleepy now. Certainly less high.”

“Good,” he murmured. “I’m banishing you to the covers. Or so help me, I’ll tickle you again.” 

“Noooooooo!” I squeaked, and shuffled underneath the covers. “This is _ your _ old bed,” I giggled, totally non-sequitur. Except everything made me think of Matt, sometimes, so it didn’t seem very non-sequitur to me. He came over and sat down on the bed beside me. “Sorry I acted like a dingus today. I was sad, and the candy was supposed to make me happy, so I ate it without thinking.”

“Mm,” he hummed, nodding sagely. “I don’t blame you, hun. You’re lucky you’re just as adorable when you’re high.” _ Just as? _ My cheeks burned.

“I just don’t--”

“Want me to take care of you? Too late, nerf herder,” he chuckled. I blew a raspberry at him. “You have to just accept it, okay? Kylo isn’t gonna be like this ever, no matter how nice he acts or how much he protects you. You have to put up with both of us in equal measure, at least. Maybe more of him.” I sighed.

“One day I will be the one taking care of _ you _,” I threatened.

“I look forward to it,” he assured me, smiling and ruffing my head. There was no hair there to muss up, but he did it anyway. I giggled.

“Since apparently I’m baby, will you hum to me again?” I asked him a little bashfully.

“Of course, hun,” he replied. I turned over onto my side, the way I like to sleep, and took his hand to hold. Fuck it. Being high and reduced to childlike behaviors was a good enough excuse, for tonight.

“Thanks,” I whispered, letting my eyes slide shut. He started to hum the little melody again, just like he had in the medical bay before. I felt myself smile almost involuntarily. _ We can talk about it when I’m sober, _ I thought blearily. _ I could get used to this… _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope y'all enjoy my SI being high as balls xD and, just as importantly, Matt being.... Matt. *insert heart eyes here*


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Force hit different when you're not manic anymore...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a heads up, there is a (very) brief mention of suicidality in this chapter.

Tragically, though unsurprisingly, taking the Namana candy was fun for a minute but when I woke up the next day to the sound of my communicator angrily buzzing at me, I still felt depressed as hell. 

“Aeon, where are you?” came a voice through the static. Fumbling out of bed, I went over to my desk to answer.

“Here, I’m here,” I muttered. “What’s going on?”

“Come to the training hall immediately,” said the voice, and then I realized who it was. _ Shit. _

“I just woke up!” I protested.

“NOW!”

“Fine, I’m coming,” I groaned, and turned the connection off. I scrambled over to at least put on clean plants and my boots before I scurried out of the suite with datapad in hand, praying to whatever was handy that I didn’t get horribly lost on the way from my new location. When I entered the training hall, Kylo was standing there with his arms crossed, fuming.

“Why didn’t you answer me the first ten times?” he growled. 

“You should really talk to Lucky 'bout that,” I told him, rubbing my temples. I was already getting a headache. “He's gotta do the same thing, it’s not personal.”

“A medical droid and your Supreme Leader are _ not _ the same thing! Your disrespect is intolerable sometimes, Aeon!” _ Excuse me, MY Supreme Leader? Pretty sure I didn't vote for you. _

“Your acting like an asshole is intolerable _ all _ the time!” I spat back, immediately furious. _ Fuck you, dude! It’s not like I have a fucking alarm clock, or was told when I was supposed to be here today! _“You’re not the only fuckin’ person around here with problems, yanno!” 

“Are _ your _ problems dictating the fate of the entire galaxy at the hands of an army? Have you ever spent the day listening to people who are beneath you squabble and fawn about production disputes and strategies half a galaxy away when you have a hundred more important things to do? Do you constantly get reminders of how the fate of everything hangs in the balance of your _ failure_??” Now he was shouting, and something just… broke, inside me. The proverbial dam, I guess.

“Fuck you, Kylo Ren! You might not’ve put yourself here, but you could take yourself out! You have a choice! You have all the power in the goddamn universe! You have everything, but me? I woke up here all alone for no reason and I have nothing, I _ am _ nothing, except a tool to you. My brain is fucking falling apart, and you wanna use it to help you control the galaxy!” My hands were clenched into fists and shaking beside me. “Well, I guess it’s working, because I’m forgetting everything. Where I used to live, what I used to know, the songs that used to keep me alive all the nights I was _ this close _ to killing myself. I can’t even remember my own dad’s face but you don’t care, you were too busy MURDERING yours, and letting your mama down. You made that choice, Kylo. Not Snoke. Not Luke, or anyone who ever hurt you. _ You _ did it.” I glared at him, more furious than I could remember being in literal years. “You _ choose _ to stay here, you _ choose _ this destiny every day, and I don't get to choose jack shit. My only choice is to be abused by you, to do what you teach me to do, or die here away from everyone I ever loved. For no reason at all. _ Fuck _ you.”

Of all the silences that had fallen so far between me and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, this one was by far the worst. The necrotic fury of more than ten years in and out of psych wards, being shunned and not believed and confined and sedated and literally restrained on a fucking gurney like I was gonna kill somebody when, actually, I was terrified that everyone else was trying to kill _ me _, fired from jobs and losing partners and friends and coming to terms with all the awful shit that happened to me before that, before I even remembered it starting… all of that, so pent up for so fucking long, had just exploded out of me and landed like a huge, awful missile on him. 

Nevermind that ultimately Kylo Ren was more of a victim of childhood neglect and the intense manipulation and abuse of Snoke from an early age than anything else. Nevermind that he’d certainly never been taught to regulate his own overpowering emotions, and instead they were his only weapon against a whole galaxy that threatened him. Nevermind all that shit I learned about trauma and resilience, about attachment and security, about being shown empathy and healing and patience, or about reconciling in your head that your parents could get a lot of things wrong about raising you, and still love you. Nevermind the whole reason I related to his character in the first place. Can you tell I’m feeling guilty about this??

He looked at me, still furious, but something else was there. Something shocked, maybe even... frightened? Almost? He glanced around me, and I realized that nearly every single object in the room that wasn’t his body was floating in midair. The benches, the scrap metal we’d been practicing with, the mats, the practice weapons that hung on the wall. And since he was a Force-user, he could surely tell that each one of them was poised to fly directly at him at any moment, like every line of energy from him to each object was pulled taut and waiting. His own light saber was suspended in front of him, pointed at his heart, not yet activated. 

_ Holy fucking shit. What did I just do? _

I blinked, and shut my eyes. In my head, all the objects were lowering very slowly to the ground, especially the saber. My heart was beating everywhere in my body at once. Was this how he felt all the time? Like he was hideously powerful, so much so that his every gut-wrenching emotion could just wreck everything in sight, so he beat up on computer terminals and droids to redirect that terrifying energy? But really, it was always there. Always lurking, ready to strike as soon as he finally lost control. As soon as _ I _ finally lost control. I had awareness he’d never been given, values he lacked. To my mind, which ya’ll remember was extremely depressed at that moment, I had no excuse for letting myself get that fucking angry. It was highly likely that he could’ve taken care of himself if it came to a full-on Force fight between us, of course, but I was assuming the worst.

When I opened my eyes again, everything was on the ground, including his light saber, which was pointed away from him now too. He hadn’t picked it up, he just stood there and stared at me with that godawful mix of all the worst emotions on his face. 

_ I should apologize. Not that it’ll fix anything, but I should. Well, it might prevent him from murdering me. Maybe. I won’t hold it against him if he murders me, though. _ But my pride had my throat swollen shut for a minute. _ God, I wish he would talk first. _

“You can leave, you know.” Okay, maybe I didn’t wish he would talk first. I knew this was gonna hurt. “I won’t stop you. You can take a shuttle and never come back. Just like _she_ did,” he said. His voice wavered, but it wasn’t loud or angry anymore. “You can join the Resistance, or you can go on a wild goose chase for your imaginary home planet, or you can farm Bantha shit on a backwater moon, for all I care. You’re not a prisoner here, Aeon. If you hate me that much, you can leave whenever you want.” 

_ Oh, goddammit. _

“I don’t hate you,” I murmured. I glanced down at the kyber crystal around my neck. It was glowing bright red.

“Are you sure? You sure you’re not just being nice to me because of Matt? Or that any of Hux’s accusations were true?” Now I glared at him.

“I said, I _ don’t _ hate you.” _ Don’t fucking tell me how I feel. _ He just stared at me, like he was expecting me to start fighting back again. My hands were shaking as I bit back the urge to do just that. “I… I didn’t realize until the other night that I’m forgetting my past. I’m… not handling it well.” Despite it all, I heard my therapist in my head chanting ‘don’t forget to use “I” statements.’ I wanted to laugh at how ironic that was, but tragically when shit hits the fan, irony isn’t really that funny anymore. 

“No, I’d say you aren’t,” he replied icily.

“I thought you might be able to relate to that,” I murmured. Without warning, I was too sad, too overcome with grief, to hang onto pride anymore. Pride just sucks, anyway. It only ever got me in trouble. “I’m… I’m sorry, Kylo. None of what I just said was okay.” I looked at the floor, feeling like a miserable and hateful creature, and I felt tears starting to rise. _ Oh fuck not this again! Fuck I hate crying!! Fuck you depression for always making me so weepy!! What am I gonna do if he tells me to leave? What am I gonna do if I can’t ever get back home?? I can’t stay here. This fictional universe sucks. I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home so fucking bad. _For what felt like forever, Kylo was silent.

“Do you feel it now? The power of the darkness?” he finally asked in his low voice, and I realized he’d walked towards me and was standing closer now. His face was grave, heavy, full of what it actually meant to wield that power. Which I now understood waaaaaay better than I possibly could’ve before. How much it fuckin’ _ hurt _. I looked into his eyes.

“Yes.” There were tears running down my cheeks already, so it was too late to worry about that. I knew Kylo was still uncertain, in that moment. Still not sure he wanted to become wholly consumed by that darkness, though sometimes he thought he already was. Other times, I was pretty sure he thought he had no choice but to be. 

“Do you wish to become its master?” _ Boy, have I got something for you, big guy. It’s called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and it’ll change your life. _ I glanced back down at the red light of the crystal around my neck.

“Is that possible?” I asked him. Trick question, of course. The answer is yes, and no. It was bizarre how much all the shit I’d been working on in therapy applied out here in space, where my brain was in full spin mode and I was hallucinating someone else’s inner demons for once. But I knew I couldn’t pretend to control my feelings, or just not have them. Already tried that shit, definitely a no-go. Pretty much the only thing I could control was how I responded to them. And when it came to people who had no fuckin’ clue how to do that, Kylo was public enemy numero uno.

_ Fuck. Am I trying to become Kylo’s therapist? No. No nono. Bad idea. Bad call. The only thing worse than wanting to fuck a fuckboy is wanting to fix one. _

“We’ll find out together,” he said. I looked back up at him, shocked. I absolutely did NOT expect him to actually admit he wasn’t sure. Now I was starting to feel like my getting out of here was gonna hinge on Kylo getting his feelings figured out. Which meant… lowkey being his therapist. _ Fuck me. I am so fucked. In none of the ways I would really like to be. Maybe I can just, uh, support him. Instead of trying to teach him. Wait, what? He’s supposed to be teaching ME! Doesn’t that constitute a dual relationship? Conflict of interest? Ethical code of conduct violation? Jesus Christ, please let me be having a nightmare right now. _ I swallowed hard. What choice did I really have? 

“Um. Okay. I’m in,” I said. Just like that, I sealed the deal. However many bad ideas had just been set into motion, it was done. I wasn’t gonna lean into the darkness, though. I was gonna show Kylo Ren how to make room for both that, and the light. Somehow. Maybe. If I could keep it together. Without all the medication that had been helping me back home. Oof.

On the bright side, making out with Matt was now looking like the least awful of my ideas, thus far.

Kylo was looking at me, and some amount of the dangerous intensity that I’d been so unfortunately attracted to before was there again. I wondered if sleeping with Kylo was also a bad idea, considering how much worse of one whatever had just happened was. _ Maybe you should deal with how you feel about Matt, before you start planning on fucking a guy who won’t cuddle with you afterward, you dumbass, _ said the Voice of Reason, who was clearly mad at me. I can’t blame it. 

“There’s an alarm clock on the hub in your room. I expect you to be timely in the future, apprentice. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and your progress has been promising so far,” he said as he turned and walked back to his saber to pick it up off the ground and reattach it to his belt.

“So you forgive me for being a giant asshole just now, then?” It was worth a shot, right? He looked back at me and narrowed his eyes. 

“Don’t push it, Aeon.” 

“You know, a very wise and powerful man once said, ‘Let the past die, kill it if you have to’...”

“Maker help me, I will kill _ you _ if I have to,” he huffed, exasperated. I grinned. “Now quit fucking around, and maybe use the Force to clean up this room, hm? For a warmup?”

“Is that a suggestion, or--”

“Have you ever known me to make suggestions?”

“Okay, okay, fair enough,” I murmured, and set about the task of hanging all the practice weapons back up, putting the benches back where they were supposed to be, and tidying up the mats on the floor. Kylo watched me, arms crossed, but I thought I saw that ghost of a smile on his face. Joke’s on him, the emotion I was utilizing to make things neat was totally regret, not anger. Not that that felt good, per say, but. It was less destructive at least. It was weak, too. I was grateful to only be making things float. I could see why Kylo got so addicted to being angry. Personally I was fucking _ terrified _ of feeling like that again. “Better now?” I asked when I was done. 

“Much,” he growled, but the almost-smile was still there, so the growl felt almost... inviting? The Voice of Reason did not like that very much. The rest of me was approaching ambivalent, to be honest. With a sprinkle of kinda into it, for flavor. I wondered if he was not-quite-smiling because he thought he was gonna totally get me to come to the dark side, or if it was because I’d actually offered an apology to him, or because against all better judgement he might actually think I was kinda cool, if also pathologically disobedient. _Then again, I'm not the first spunky apprentice he’s tried to wrangle. _

That thought left a bad taste in my mouth.

“Do you think it would’ve been like this with her?” I asked him suddenly, looking up at him from across the room as I idly stretched out my foot and ankle on a mat. His brow knit.

“With who?” 

“Rey.” I let the silence hang for a minute, because I knew that one had come out of the fucking blue. Much like most of my questions did, for him. But I had felt compelled to ask. He looked away, then back at me.

“Probably not.” That was an awfully safe answer.

“Don’t replace her with me, Kylo. I’m not like her.”

“You’re not?”

“No. She’s naive. She still has hope.”

“Do you have no hope?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious. Did I? Was it hope that kept me in this room with a sexy murderer who happened to be the leader of a fascist regime in a galaxy far, far away from the only place I wanted to be, which was back the fuck home? I met his gaze, looked straight into his piercing dark eyes.

“Hope is for people who see the end, who have a way out. I only have persistence.” It prolly sounds like some emo bullshit, but that answer describes how it feels to know that you’re never gonna really see an end to dramatic ups and downs for the rest of your life. I’m bipolar, and that shit’s always gonna be there. I can either throw up my hands and let it take me over, or I can persist, and learn, and take it as it comes. I can figure out how to live with it. Now, in the most cursed self-insert ever, where the memory of my dad’s face had once been there was only my unwillingness to let it stay gone forever. Fuck that noise. 

Kylo looked very soberly at me, then. I think, for the first time, I saw respect on his face. Like he actually looked like he respected me. It wasn’t really as satisfying as I’d imagined, but damn, after all that nasty shit I just said to him? I’d take it. 

But then I felt very, very strange-- like I wasn’t entirely sure what the hell had just happened since I’d walked into the training room. I had no idea how to contextualize any of Kylo’s behavior, even though I knew that certain things might be affecting it (Matt, Ben, his crush on/ disappointment with Rey, self-loathing, remembering what training with Snoke was like, the fact that I’d actually apologized maybe?). I guess I’d been looking at him through a pretty narrow lens since I got here. Like, despite relating to his pain and anger, I’d also totally written him off as Big Angry Asshole In Charge. Now that he was showing something else, and not like via Matt or Ben or anything but just… as _ himself _ … it was starting to hit me that I didn’t know him just because I knew his story. _ Fuck these bad writers, _ I thought. _ They made the whole sequel series about him, really, and still didn’t even flesh him out as a character. _

“So,” I continued, extremely ready to change the subject yet again. “What we doin’ today, coach?” 

“Something different,” he said, and he held out his hand. Before I knew it, two of the wooden practice blades, about sword length, had flown off the wall and into his waiting glove.

“Shit,” I breathed. _ Here we go. _

“Today, we begin preparing you to fight with your own saber.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UH OH
> 
> WE GON BE A BIG SITH LORD NOW, Y'ALL
> 
> ps. no, i did NOT expect all the feels in this chapter, but dang if they're not just right there!! thank you for reading <3 <3


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Phasma is rude, and Mitaka is a real one.

A couple days later, I was drilling in the training hall with the wooden sword-thing, which I honestly really only stuck with because I actually _ didn’t _ have anything better to do. Kylo had given me just one (1) routine to go through until I was sick of it, so that’s what I did. I was still depressed, but not quite catatonic. Even in space I was clinging to my hard-won healthy coping mechanisms, and I knew getting up and moving around was good for me. Meditation wasn’t going so great, because I just felt shitty most of the time and I was avoiding using the Force because of it. I’d been messaging Matt, though, so he knew at least that I’d blown up at Kylo and somehow managed to a) not get brutally murdered and b) even more strongly solidify my position as his apprentice. He usually got back to me at night, after the Supreme Dingus was done with his day job.

So I was kinda surprised when my datapad pinged on the bench in the training hall in the middle of the afternoon while I was moving (lazily) through my routine. 

**Hey! You still wanna go on an adventure?** Oh, yeah. We were supposed to be doing that, weren’t we?

**Um, I think so… haha**, I replied a little nervously.

**Okay. Tomorrow is the day. We just need to be back by 1900. We can take a shuttle.** Wow. Apparently Kylo was on board? He hadn’t talked to me about it, but. Well. I assumed I could trust Matt.

**When do you wanna leave?**

**Need to leave at 0800, starboard shuttle bay. I know that’s early for you, but it’ll be worth it, I promise!!** I smiled fondly at the two exclamation marks.

**Okay, I trust you! Should I dress a certain way? Weather?**

**It’s breezy where we’re going, and cool but not cold. Whatever makes you comfy.** Hm…

**Alright, noted. So I’ll meet you at the starboard shuttle bay at 0800?**

**Yes!! I’m so excited!!** I giggled. I could picture him waving his hands, putting them over his mouth, bobbing up and down a little with glee. _ Oh, Matt. You’re perfect. Never change. _

**Me too!! See you soon!**

**See you!! Have a good night!!** The day he discovered three exclamation points, I was gonna faint from sheer wholesomeness.

**You too!!** I sat there on the bench with the wooden sword in my hand, scraping the tip across the floor absently while I smiled at the message history like a total loon for a minute. Matt being himself was a total mood-booster. Which made it extra annoying when Phasma walked up to me out of the blue and started running her damn mouth.

“Well, if it isn’t the Supreme Leader’s pet.” I looked up at her, and she was standing there with her arms crossed, sneering at me. _ What is this Draco Malfoy-ass bullshit? _

“Captain Phasma,” I greeted, trying to sound as dismissive as humanly possible. I shut off the datapad screen and slid it into my pocket. 

“Are you going to hide behind your master again today?” As soon as she said that, I was extra aware of the kyber crystal where it was touching my chest underneath my shirt. _ Guess who can defend themself a lot better, these days... _

“What are you, like, Hux’s little bitch? Are you here to bully me because he can’t get close to me without losing another hand, minimum?” I wasn’t feeling cocky, today. More like I had nothing to lose. Casual lack of self-preservation was also a depression thing.

“I answer to no one,” she growled. 

“Yeah, I’m aware of that, ya fuckin’ traitor.”

“Do you think your lies about myself and General Hux will be believed by anyone? Everyone says you’re mad as a spice fiend.”

“_ Lieutenant _ General Hux, you mean? Why do y’all have this fixation that I’m gonna do something about your sordid little pasts?” As much as I was trying to put her off, I was starting to actually wonder. Like no really, what _ is _ your problem? “I don’t get it. I have one goal and I thought I was pretty fuckin’ blunt about it from the get-go. It literally has nothing to do with you or Hux or anybody else, and I even wish it had less to do with Kylo Ren! Why y’all so obsessed with me?” 

“You are a threat to the stability of our leadership. I don’t trust you, because you slid into the graces of our Supreme Leader before anything else-- and maybe his bed, too. He’s the most powerful man in the galaxy, Aeon. You can’t tell me that wasn’t on purpose.” _ Jeez. _

Okay, I didn’t think of myself as the same as any of these people- I was watching them on TV and reading books about them all before I got here, and had finally accepted that this wasn’t a hallucination. The two most real people on board to me were Lucky Sevens, who was a literal _ droid_, and Matt. Kylo was getting realer, but he still felt mostly like a caricature of a person because he was so fuckin’ opaque and so fuckin’ mad all the time. But they knew nothing at all about me. I guess it makes sense that they would see me as real, and therefore a possible threat. I stood up from the bench, tired of her making me feel small. Also trying to maybe edge towards the exit.

“Listen, dude. I dunno what to fuckin’ tell you. Even if Kylo _ was _ fucking me, he still wouldn’t listen to me. I might know the history around here, but I dunno shit about how to run things, and he reminds me of that pretty regularly. I do _ not _ want to be here, or to be constantly getting ordered around by him and yelled at. I’m in more danger of getting hurt by him than anybody else on board, right now. I know lots about the past. But his whole schtick is letting the past die, so I got nothin’.” I wondered if this was gonna shut her up even a little bit.

“And what of the future?” she replied, narrowing her eyes. _ Ah, shit. _

“The future is fluid. Nothing about it is guaranteed. You know that, because you’ve spent your whole life trying to fix it in place. By whatever means necessary. Has it worked yet?” That seemed legit. She looked me over, like she was trying to decide what my response meant about me, rather than trying to answer me.

“Um, ma-- er, Aeon?” came a little voice, and I turned around to see Mitaka of all fucking people shuffling over towards us. _ Okay, this ain’t exactly Kylo coming to scare her off, but I can’t say I’m not grateful that her lil interrogation check-ins keep getting interrupted. _

“Yes, Lieutenant?” I replied curiously.

“Ah, Supreme Leader requires your presence, I’m afraid,” he said. He glanced at Phasma, who looked very irritated. “Presently.” I looked back at the tall Captain and shrugged. 

“Sorry, chrome-dome. Gotta jet.” And I turned unceremoniously towards Mitaka, who offered me a thin little smile and Phasma a hurried nod before he fell in beside me. I fully expected her to shout some parting quip at me, but she didn’t. Which was fine with me. “Gotta say, most of his interruptions aren’t so welcome,” I told the mousy man as we exited the training hall. 

“Ah, well. You see, you weren’t precisely summoned, actually,” he intoned to me. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I wasn’t?”

“No, um, and do forgive me if I’m out of line, but I rather thought you might like a way out of the conversation you were having.” _ Wait. Was he just trying to help me ditch her? _ I felt a grin starting to break out on my face. 

“Oh yeah? Damn, Lieutenant. Smooth move!” Now he seemed to be smiling more confidently. 

“Yes, well, I’m glad you aren’t cross with me. But having met you, and having heard what one hears around the ship, well.” He shrugged a little. 

“She’s the worst. She’s like, tryna bully me or something. Or just scare me. I guess I should be scared of her, but mostly I’m just pissed,” I told him as we walked. “But yanno, it just seems like a bad idea to fuck with her. Yet I am so tempted every time.”

“She is ruthless, yes. And the rumors about her abound, and even if only one of them were true, it wouldn’t be good.” 

“Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

“No trouble,” he assured me with a chuckle. “Ah, did you mean to bring the waster with you?” He pointed to the wooden sword that was still in my hand, and I laughed. 

“No, not really, but I reckon it’s mine now ‘cuz I sure as hell ain’t taking it back there. Maybe I’ll practice someplace where I’m less likely to run into her.” I wondered if the meditation room was big enough to comfortably let me swing a sword around. Mitaka laughed. 

“Ah, well. Perhaps for self-defense,” he mused.

“Yeah, actually, this is laser-blocking wood? It’s the next big thing in melee weapons. Totally effective against fuckin’ blasters and light sabers and shit,” I joked. He laughed again.

“Alright. Point taken.”

“So, where are we going exactly?” I asked, realizing that I had no clue where on the ship we’d walked to. He looked surprised.

“Um, well, I suppose I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he confessed a little sheepishly. I snorted. 

“Well, you’re in charge of navigation, buddy. Where to?” He hummed thoughtfully.

“Oh, perhaps a drink? I’m actually off-duty, for the evening. You can buy me one, for the favor,” he suggested, winking conspiratorially at me.

“I totally would, but I’m broke. I should really ask Kylo for an allowance,” I told him. 

“It’s quite possible you’ll not be asked to pay for them, ducky. You technically outrank everyone but the Supreme Leader himself, and I think that scares most everybody.”_ Did he just call me ducky? God he is such a little gay British dork. We should totally be friends. _

“I reckon there’s one way to find out,” I replied, grinning. “To the Cockpit, then?” 

“Righty-ho. Follow me.” 

\-----

“You know, everyone’s wrong about you,” Mitaka said after taking a swallow of his drink. Yes, it was free, and yes, it was pink, and yes, there was a cherry in it. His jacket and gloves were on his lap, revealing a white tee and black suspenders holding up his gray uniform pants. We were sitting at the end of the bar inside the Cockpit, which was exactly as dingy and lowkey as its name suggested-- though, tragically, Mitaka was the gayest-looking person there so far. I’m not sure my brand of androgyny looks as obviously gay as short man with juuuuust a little cute pudge, wearing suspenders and drinking something bright pink. 

“Well, nobody even knows me, so yeah, I bet they are,” I replied, swirling ice and fizzpop around in my glass. No liquor for me, thank you very much. I needed a hangover on a strange planet the next day like I needed a hole in my head.

“Of course, but when you start off getting cozy with a man like Ren, people talk. Some of them have nothing better to do, it seems.” He rolled his eyes.

“People talk and asses fart, my granny always said. Besides, if they think it’s physically possible to ‘get cozy’ with the Supreme Dickhead, they’ve obviously never actually stood in front of the guy. His whole deal is like, Hi I’m Kylo And I Will Murder You Whenever I Feel Like It,” I giggled. 

“I cannot imagine,” the little man murmured, shaking his head. But he also seemed a little… I dunno, like maybe he did actually imagine a few things about Kylo. “Is that what it’s like, working with him? You must be terribly anxious.”

“Meh, I have something wrong with my brain, so I’m either excited about it or mad. Mostly mad.”

“Has he decided to leave off getting better, then?” Oh yeah, I’d already told him that Kylo was improving. Lately I felt kinda bad for leaning into the Supreme Asshole thing, since he really was getting better maybe, but I figured it might keep his reputation among the subordinates exactly how he liked it.

“On and off. Just depends on I know not what. He’s not really into sharing,” I sighed, sipping the fizzpop. It tasted like Coke. I wondered if that was because they’d used Coke on set, or something. _ Like, how do these details become canon anyhow? _

“Well, that’s alright, ducky. You carry on tolerably. But enough about work! What else do you get up to on the ship?” he asked brightly, leaning his elbow on the bar and then his head into his hand and stirring his drink with a tiny straw. We were totally already friends.

“Honestly man, I don’t get up to all that much. I’m not like, all that popular, I guess. You’re my second friend who isn’t a droid.” _ Wait. Fuck. _ Matt was the first friend. Matt was not supposed to exist. _ Shit shit shit shit shit. _

“You poor thing! You know, I think you could meet people easier than you think. You’re quite charming, if a bit abrasive, but then again, well. Plenty of people are,” he assured me pleasantly. “And some people like that about a person. Who’s the first friend?” I swallowed. _ He was so fucking close to just skipping that question! Aaargh! _

“Listen, I don’t wanna, I dunno, spread gossip, okay?” I stammered, my face starting to get warm. Mitaka’s eyes widened, and a very impish grin appeared on his face. I froze, terrified of whatever the fuck that face meant. _ What does that face mean? _

“Does the Apprentice have a little crush? Hmm?” he cooed very quietly, but full of delight. “Don’t worry ducky, you don’t have to say who.” I looked away, turning redder. Okay, which was worse: being needled for information about Matt, or being spotted _ immediately _ for having a big dumb crush on him the first time I barely even opened my big dumb mouth? Mitaka squeaked. 

“Be nice to me,” I mumbled, looking into my glass, trying to repress a smile and failing. 

“Oooooo you dooo! I was about to advise you go out and let a brave soul buy you a drink, but it looks like somebody beat me to it!” He giggled. I rolled my eyes. “How did you two meet?”

“Um,” I said eloquently. _ Fuck. He just showed the fuck up in the medical bay because he was actually sharing a body with Kylo Ren and wanted to talk to someone else for the first time in ages? Can ya blame him? _ “It was just like, yanno, incidental. He’s a… technician. He, uh, he showed me how to use my datapad.”

“_ He? _ My my,” the little man crooned. “I must say, Aeon, among the reasons I doubted the rumors about you and Lord Ren was that I hadn’t pegged you for a heterosexual.” _ HA! CALLED IT!! MITAKA IS TOTALLY GAY!! _ I smirked at him.

“I’m not. I’m an equal opportunist.” He looked _ delightfully _ scandalized, at this.

“Oooh, adventurous are we? If you ever get to bed a Zabrak, you simply _ have _ to tell me how it goes,” he intoned. I hadn’t reckoned on the implications of the phrase ‘equal opportunist’ in a multispecies galaxy. _ Welp, that sure escalated quickly. Wasn’t Darth Maul a Zabrak? _ I raised an eyebrow at him.

“You a fan of horns?” I asked, awkwardly.

“Not really, it’s more their… resilience. Physically, I mean.” He put a hand over his mouth as though he shouldn’t be saying something so suggestive, and looked off into the distance wistfully. 

“Aaaah.” Okay, gay culture was just as slutty in Star Wars as it was in real life. That was fine by me, honestly. It was familiar, even though I hadn’t been able to really get out much for a few years before I’d shown up here-- and before that I was prone to bouts of manic hypersexuality that were unhealthy, to say the least. “You know, I think I’d be more excited to sleep with a Chiss. The blue skin and red eyes and overwhelming intensity are kinda hot.” Maybe? I was bullshitting to seem normal, mostly. I’d never met a Chiss.

“Good luck finding one, unless you plan to move to the other side of the galaxy and become Admiral Thrawn’s apprentice instead,” the lieutenant clucked.

“Kylo wouldn’t appreciate that much, I don’t think,” I giggled.

“You’ve gotten me off topic! So, you met this crush of yours when he set up your datapad?” I returned to awkward blushing. Involuntarily, of course.

“Um, yes.”

“So what’s he like?” His eyes were all stars, like he just wanted to hear me gush about Matt. This… wow. I missed this. I missed having friends. Shocking, I know.

“Well, um, he’s very tall. He’s very handsome, but of course I would say that,” I giggled, and Mitaka’s face lit up even more. “He’s a total sweetheart, like he’s so nice to me it’s kinda fucked up. He’s always tryna make sure I’m eating and sleeping right, and wants to hear about my day ‘n stuff. He even showed me how to navigate the ship. He says the sweetest shit. I’m just like, stop being nice to me! Say something toxic!” I laughed, then tried desperately to stop gushing about Matt. God, it was like once the floodgates opened...

“Maker, don’t I know exactly what you mean,” he sighed, rolling his eyes. “Men are dogs, ducky. But he sounds like a keeper!” 

“Yeah,” I murmured, swirling my drink again. ‘_ Cept the whole sharing-a-body-with-Kylo-Ren thing, which isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but it does complicate things a whole fuckin’ lot. _

“So, has he, you know?” He wagged his brows at me. “Put the moves on you, yet?”

“I don’t know if he likes me back or not,” I sighed. Mitaka snorted.

“Oh, that’s absurd. Clearly he does! You’re ravishing,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at me.

“I don’t feel too ravishing, to be honest, but thanks.”_ You half-accepted that compliment, so it only half counts. _

“Well, we all feel shoddy, sometimes. But you ought not let that stop you!” 

“Ya think?” I asked sincerely, biting my lip.

“Of course! Why the hell not? You should ask him,” he confirmed, nodding sagely like he was a fuckin’ marriage guru. I sighed.

“It’s… complicated. Neither of us is in a real good position to deal with any, uh, fallout.”

“Well, ducky, just switch positions,” he muttered, grinning impishly and winking. “There’s lots of different ways to do it.” _ Wow, I think this gay boy just made a sex joke a me. _ I snorted.

“Yeah, yeah. I dunno.” I swirled my fizzpop some more, but all my swirling had knocked the fizz right out of it. “We’re supposed to be, um, going planetside together. Sometime soon.” _ Not tomorrow-soon, of course. Just, you know, soon. _

“Ooh, see that’s very cute! Perhaps on your little date you might ask, hm? Away from all this hustle and bustle and protocol and nonsense?” he egged me on. I shrank into my shoulders nervously. 

“Maybe,” I mumbled.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a shy one, either,” the lieutenant confided, grinning.

“Normally I’m not! But yanno, this whole thing’s a very new experience for me. The being on this ship thing, and the Supreme Leader thing, not the dating thing.” He patted my shoulder.

“Fear not, ducky. You’ll get it sorted, I’m sure.”

“Thanks,” I groaned. I didn’t feel especially confident about that, but it was good to have some support, or at least a voice other than the Voice of Reason sounding off in my head. I looked at my datapad, thinking of Matt, and then I saw the time.

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry Lieutenant. I gotta run off and get some sleep. Early day tomorrow,” I said as I rose from my stool. “Like, really fuckin’ early.” 

“Alright, do take care, then. And you don’t have to use my title, ducky.”

“Isn’t your name Dopheld?” I asked, hoping to God I was pronouncing it right. What the fuck kinda name is that, anyway?

“Yes, but my friends all call me Duffy.”

“Wow. Duffy? That’s cute. Alright, g’night then, Duffy,” I grinned at him. He waved another hand at me, smiling.

“Off with you. Try to avoid certain Captains, ducky.” _ Duffy and ducky. Wholesome. _

“I’ll do my damnedest,” I assured him, and I sauntered away with my wooden sword in hand, feeling a lot better than I had been for a minute there. A little fuckin’ friendship goes a long way, it turns out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mitaka is friend :D
> 
> the next chapter is literally absurd amounts of Matt fluff. like, your brain will explode. please stay tuned for: holy shit Matt is sooooo cute i'm gonna die. thank you so much <3


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are Big Damn Fluffy Adventures with Matt.

Honestly, all my goofin’ about if Matt liked me back or not aside, I was so hype for this fucking trip I couldn’t sleep. I might’ve gotten two hours of actual REM cycle, I dunno, but being crazy means that when I don’t sleep, I just feel EXTRA bouncy the next day. Might’ve kicked off another manic episode, but fuck it! Who cares! I was going planetside with Matt!!

I dressed in one of the high-neck shirts with no sleeves, comfy pants tucked into my boots, and the hooded cowl, which was objectively the coolest piece in my wardrobe. I tucked the kyber crystal under the cowl, because I was starting to get uncomfortable without it. I was waiting in the starboard shuttle bay, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, about twenty minutes early. The bay was alive with activity, ships flying in and out constantly and unloading shit, or loading shit, or transporting battalions of troopers, or whatever they were doing. There were big ships and tiny ships, loud ships that were clearly old rust-buckets and quiet, sleek ships that were too shiny to not be First Order vessels. I watched everything I could stuff into my eyeballs, and scanned all the while for a certain very tall, very attractive person.

“Hello,” came a soft voice from my right, and I jerked around to see exactly the tall, attractive person I wanted to see. His hair wasn’t blonde, and he was in full Kylo regalia, but I could tell by the sound of his voice and his slumped shoulders who I was actually talking to. I beamed.

“Hii,” I whispered. “Should I pretend you’re Big Angry Boy right now?” A twinkle came into his eye. 

“Yes,” Matt whispered back. “I’ll also be doing that. By being as silent as possible, mostly.”

“Sounds about right.” I stood up. “Where exactly are we going, sir?” I said in a louder voice this time, and with a little extra brat thrown in. Matt barely contained a chuckle, then managed to summon half a scowl.

“You’ll see. Come with me.” _ Him trying to be half as grouchy as Kylo is so fuckin’ funny I can’t stand it. _ I clenched my jaw, trying not to laugh. He turned and waited for me to fall in beside him, and marched us over to a little shuttle with wings that were folded up like butterfly’s. I vaguely remembered-- was that an Upsilon-class shuttle? No, wait, that was Kylo’s fancy schmancy shuttle. I guess this was like the baby version. The door opened, and Matt stood as though he was going to let me in first.

“You go first,” I muttered to him under my breath. “Trust me.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, and turned and marched inside. I followed, and the door shut behind me. The interior of the shuttle was tiny, the first room was like a loading hangar with seats for six people. Matt was already in the pilot’s chair, so I shuffled through the tiny hall to the cockpit to join him. 

“Well, nobody stopped us, at least,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief as I collapsed into the copilot’s seat.

“Thank the Maker. I’m too excited to pretend to be Kylo!!” he squeaked, bouncing up and down in the seat while he hit a bunch of buttons and all sorts of low humming noises started to happen. Before I could even reply, the engine kicked up and we were fuckin’ airborne, y’all.

“Shit!” I watched the floor of the shuttle bay get smaller and farther away, and then we were careening forward out of the shielded entrance and into-- _ space _. 

I know, I know. I’ve been in space this whole time. But have y’all ever been in space? Like, looking out a damn window watching space just do its thing all around you??

“Haha! Yes!” Matt was shouting gleefully. We swung out and then around, and a big planet that was full of trees and mountains came into view. Behind it were two suns.

“Holy fucking shit!” I was sitting glued to the copilot’s chair, gripping the arm rests until my knuckles turned white. It was completely exhilarating, and slightly fucking terrifying. “Holy fucking shit, I’m in space!”

“You’ve _ been _ in space!” he reminded me, grinning.

“I fuckin’ know that! I’ve just never been _ this _ in space!! Holy hell!” Now he was just laughing at me, all good-natured and clearly comfortable driving the damn thing which did make me less nervous. “How long does it take to get down there?”

“Not long, maybe thirty minutes?”

“Are we landing in town? Is there like, a parking lot or something? For spaceships?”

“There’s a landing plaza on the edge of Plateau City, and a field down off the plateau. We’re gonna land in the field and take a speeder, to draw less attention.”

“You’re driving the speeder, right?” He laughed. 

“I will drive the speeder, yes.”

“Great.” I stared out the window, unable to take my eyes off the approaching planet. Matt leaned back away from the button-littered dashboard, kicking his feet up and putting his hands behind his head.

“Damn, I miss this. I haven’t flown in forever.” He looked out the window for a moment, smiling wistfully, and then looked over at me. “Isn’t this great?”

“Um, it’s definitely interesting. I mean, it’s great, it’s just that I also just ate breakfast,” I replied, slowly releasing my grip on the arm rests as the overall sense of whooshing around started to fade. He chuckled. The details of the planet’s surface got clearer almost imperceptibly, like every minute or so I’d realize that I could see a little more. “What’s Plateau City like?”

“It’s not quite dingy, it’s just… rugged. It’s equal parts local and waystation. Kaller was colonized by the Separatists during the Clone Wars, and then the Old Republic and the Separatists fought over it, but it’s last affiliation was with the Empire. I think right now, it’s mostly trying to stay out of the way. But the First Order secured fealty, and is bringing in resources right now. That’s why we’re in orbit.”

“Huh.” Okay, I guess less than violently so, because Kylo himself hadn’t been down here cutting people in half to make a point. “Interesting. You said they’re famous for their jewelry and armor?” 

“Yeah, it’s a pretty lush place so there’s a lot of food exports too, but Kalleran leatherwork specifically is high quality. They haven’t gone as high-tech as other places here, yet. It’s kinda nice.” Matt glanced out at the planet, which I was still staring at. Being in a shuttle was way more disorienting than standing in the meditation room and looking out the window, so while it was beautiful, I was mostly just trying to reassure myself that I was safe. _ You are NOT going to crash land on the planet, OR go drifting out into the void! Matt’s here, it’ll be fine! _

“You don’t think someone spotting Kylo here would be a problem, do you?” I asked, brow knitting.

“Oh, I’m not gonna keep all this on. And I’m gonna-- actually, lemme go do that now. Be right back!” And he jumped mischievously out of the pilot’s seat, and my heart skipped several beats. _ Wait! He’s flying! He can’t-- _

“Autopilot, dingus. Au. To. Pi. Lot,” I murmured to myself. I stayed glued to the spot while I heard Matt rustling around behind me, opening a door in the wall of the hallway, and humming to himself absently. God, he’s so cute. I decided to just sit there and breathe very deliberately until he returned.

“Ta-da!” came a voice, and I turned around from the window to see Matt standing in the entrance with his arms held up, presenting himself. He was blonde again, and bespectacled, and was wearing a white t-shirt tucked into black trousers which were held up by suspenders (I’m guessing suspenders are part of the uniform, or at least one of the uniforms) and over all of that, a weathered brown leather jacket. His boots were a lot like mine, trooper boots. He looked fantastic, of course.

“How did you get your hair blonde so fast???? I have to bleach mine for fuckin’ ever to get it like that.” These are the important questions.

“It’s a rinse, I just washed my hair in the refresher sink. It fades in 16 hours, and there’s another rinse that takes it out, too.” He seemed very pleased with himself. 

“Wow. Space hair-dye is nuts. Well, you don’t look very much like Kylo, now, at least not from any reasonable distance.” 

“Precisely,” he said, and touched the side of his nose with his hand. I giggled, and he resumed sitting in the pilot’s seat. “Hang on, we’re about to break atmo!”

I’ll spare y’all the details of how fucking anxiety-inducing it is to ‘break atmo’ and then careen towards the ground and then pull up at what feels like the last possible second to plonk down onto a field of dirt, surrounded by other spaceships of various shapes and sizes. By the time the engines were powered down, I was breathing pretty hard.

“Well, that was an experience,” I mumbled, rising for the first time since takeoff out of my seat. I wasn’t as queasy as I thought I might be, at least.

“There are _ soooo _ many more experiences that are gonna happen today!!!” Matt practically pulled me off the ship by the arm, the door closing behind us as he led me over to a little lot full of speeders. They were just like the ones Luke had been flying around on Tattooine in Episode IV. I was chuckling at how excited he was, and also relieved that I’d be sitting inside basically a convertible. That seemed safe. There was a tiny little shack at the edge of the lot, with a machine that looked for all the world like a parking meter. There was a sign on the window beside it in a language I didn’t recognize. I like to imagine it was something akin to ‘Gone Fishing.’ Matt slid something into the machine, and it dispensed a little key which he grabbed. “Off we go!” he told me, feral with joy, and I followed him into the clot of speeders. I got confused when he wasn’t stopping to get into one, though.

“Uh, Matt, which one are we…” Before I could finish my sentence, he stopped in front of the Star Wars equivalent of a motorcycle. A fuckin’ AIR motorcycle. A FLOATING MOTORCYCLE.

“They have swoop bikes!” he informed me, and immediately hopped on and looked at me expectantly. I was looking with just a liiiiiitle trepidation at it. 

“I dunno--”

“Aeon. I will not let you fall off. I know you said you trust me already, but _ trust _ me!” he pleaded, and held out his hand. “These are faster and less likely to break down than those old X-34’s, anyway. Just hold onto me!”

_ Well, when you put it that way… _

I took his hand and climbed up onto the seat of the bike, pressing up against his back. _Christ, he’s so big._ I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed, laying my head between his shoulder blades. The engine roared to life.

“Hang on!” he cried, and immediately started to laugh and whoop as that goddamn thing took off like a racehorse. For a moment, I squeezed my eyes shut. But then I couldn’t help myself and I opened them again, watching the rocky field we were on zoom by. Out in the distance there were low shrubs and clumps of trees, and the temperature was cool and the bike of course made a breeze that felt so, so, SO nice after being on a starship and breathing recycled air for however fucking long. Despite myself, I started to laugh.

When I finally looked ahead, I saw the impressive silhouette of Plateau City, which was in fact a bunch of buildings up on top of-- you guessed it-- a plateau. Speeders and ships were landing and taking off into the sky every now and then, and the first of two suns was just rising above the lowest parts of the skyline. _ Oh wow. Oh shit. This is super fucking cool. _ Matt took our little speed bike up along a trail, which eventually became a real road, that wound up the side of the plateau until it leveled out at the top. We entered a giant shipyard, presumably the landing plaza, and he parked us in a little lot full of other land-faring crafts. When the engine died down, he was still laughing.

“Ahaha, that was great. Unexpected surprise,” he was saying as I looked all around the city at the people (and the aliens) moving through it. “You ready?” he prompted me gently, and I realized I was still clinging to his waist. I blushed.

“Oh, um, actually I was hoping you could just carry me around all day, strapped to your back, yanno? I thought that might be fun,” I joked with him, reluctantly turning loose and sliding off the seat of the bike. I just kept staring at everything I could, and he waved a hand in front of my face.

“Come on, wobbles. You ain’t seen nothing yet!” I beamed at him, and he held out his hand to me again. “Hang onto me, okay? It’s crowded. I don’t wanna lose you.” My heart thudded wildly in my ears. _ He wants to hold my hand! For totally practical reasons!! _

“Mkay,” I said, suddenly shy, and took it. He smiled, and then we were moving through the streets of an alien planet.

I can’t even describe all the shit I saw. There were people and aliens of every kind I remembered from the Star Wars canon and several I didn’t, dressed in mostly blue-collar type clothes I think. There were Twi’leks and Rodians and Iktochi and humans of every stripe and I’m pretty sure I even saw a Wookie. And those were just the humanoid ones. But the farther we got from the landing plaza, the more I started to see Kallerians, too. They were green and black and kinda like fish-looking humanoids with three fingers and three toes, and they were by far the most colorfully dressed. I could tell why their jewelry was famous.

“We’re heading to the market first, since it’s early,” Matt told me as we walked hand in hand(!!!!) through the city.

“I don’t have any money,” I reminded him.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” he asked, impish grin returning to his face. “I’ll get you anything you want.”

“Really?” I was blushing again.

“Yeah, really, you nerf herder.” As if on cue, we rounded a corner and were facing a partially-covered network of stalls and shops, which was already bustling with people. My eyes blew wide open.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. I could see everything from brightly colored clothing to an array of blasters to fresh produce to tiny household droids to leather goods to speeder parts. It was like any good market, but with an extra dump of science fiction and aliens. I looked up at Matt, who was grinning at me with infectious enthusiasm.

“Where to first?” he asked. I had no idea, of course, so I just pointed vaguely. 

“Anywhere!”

We wandered the stalls for a while, my brain just barely starting to take in everything. Matt stopped excitedly to look at shuttle engine modifiers and turbo-boosters for a minute, which made me adore him even more. He also pointed out just about every single food item that was there and urged me to try them all. I tasted a lot of weird shit, that day. Most of it was pretty good, though. Kallerians like spicy food, too. I saw jewelry and beautiful hand-made items, at least half of which I had no clue what they were even for. Matt kept looking at dresses, trying to guess which ones were too girly for me and which ones might have been androgynous enough, like it was a game he was trying to get good at. He would also lead me over much more pointedly to look at clothes that were more my style, and he really did have an eye for what I liked. I insisted that we not buy anything until after lunch, but was totally overruled. That fucker insisted on fleshing out my wardrobe, and buying me a new pair of Kallerian leather boots, and feeding me every interesting and tasty-smelling dish we came across, so the whole breakfast-lunch-dinner routine got totally thrown off, anyway. He got me a leather satchel, which I admit was pretty practical and really nice, which I could fasten like a backpack but with a cross-body strap. It was even black leather, though I didn’t bother asking what animal it came from because who the fuck knows, in space.

Late that afternoon, after we’d taken a siesta to try a bunch of different fruits, we were sitting under a gauzy awning in this little picnic area by the market where all the shoppers would post up with snacks. I was eating some kind of white and pink melon, and spitting the little green seeds out with relish.

“This reminds me of bein’ a kid, spitting watermelon seeds in the summer,” I mused. “I still remember that, at least.” 

“So just certain things, you’ve forgotten?” Matt asked, curious but clearly worried about it still.

“Yeah. Sometimes the songs come back while I’m practicing, but then another song I’ll forget half of.” I had been trying to strum on my guitar at night, to keep tabs on what all was missing as much as I knew how. It would make me so happy to remember something I’d forgotten before, only to make me so fucking miserable when there was something new that was gone.

“You should keep playing. Maybe it’ll help you remember,” he suggested, taking a bite of his fruit. It looked like an orange and a pineapple had a purple baby, that’s the only way I know how to describe it. He was sitting on the same side of the table as me on the bench seat, one leg up on the wood and the other hanging off just like he’d sat on my bed in the medical bay that one time. I was sitting cross-legged facing away from the table, which made no sense, but I have a habit of sitting in fully goofy ways. I shrugged.

“Maybe.” _It certainly couldn’t hurt,_ I guessed. “I think I’ve been forgetting less, since I stopped practicing with the Force so much.” 

“You stopped practicing with the Force?” he asked through a mouthful of purple fruit.

“Well, we shifted focus a bit. He’s teaching me swordplay, now.”

“Oh, wow. So like, to prep for using a lightsaber, right?” He seemed impressed.

“Yeah, but he’s got his fuckin’ work cut out for him because I’m a total noob,” I giggled. Matt tried not to chuckle with fruit in his mouth, and took a swig of the water that was in the bottle he’d brought with him before offering it to me. I took it, and had a mouthful myself. _ We’ve basically kissed now, right? Our mouths have touched the same water bottle. We might as well kiss, I’m just saying. _

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he replied finally, smiling. “How d’ya feel about the Force stuff, though? I mean, I know you’re gettin’ good at it.” I grimaced.

“Maybe too good. Or maybe too powerful and not disciplined enough. Or maybe I was just that fuckin’ pissed,” I wondered out loud. “Whatever it was, it was scary. I don’t wanna just… explode at any moment.”

“You said you got mad at him, right? He didn’t get mad back?”

“Oh, he got mad back. He just… reacted different.” _ You can leave. I won’t stop you. You can take a shuttle and never come back. _ I could remember his face when he said that, like he was so angry, and so wounded, and so full of self-loathing. _ Just like she did. _

“Different like how?” Matt asked, looking at me with his sweet, concerned expression.

“I think I really hurt his feelings. He hasn’t officially forgiven me, yet. But like, to be fair, I went for the jugular. I said things I regret, but I apologized. And I meant it.” I sighed.

“If you meant it, I promise he could tell. He’s used to bullshit, even without prying into someone’s mind he can tell if they’re apologizing for real or not. That means a lot, to us.” He smiled at me a little, and very sincerely. I nodded.

“Yeah. I know the feelin’. But the real thing of it was like, I understood in that moment what the whole ‘dark side’ thing actually means. I understand why he’s so fuckin’ angry. Because I mean, shit, if my anger had ever been that powerful, I woulda used it, too,” I tried to explain. That feeling, of how phenomenally powerful and risky the Force is in those moments, was not one I was liable to forget anytime soon.

“But it wasn’t?” he asked softly. He was looking at me like he understood much more the idea that anger _ wasn’t _ powerful than the other way around. I nodded again.

“Not for me, anyway. But I bottle it up, ‘cuz of that, and that’s not good either.” 

“No, it’s not.” He looked away, down at his half-eaten fruit. I got the overwhelming sensation that he was relating to me real hard, just then. I reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. He looked back at me, his expression a little raw, but very soft and kind.

“We’ll figure it out, all of us,” I assured him, even though I wasn’t exactly sure of that myself. Kylo could be such a fucking dick, sometimes. Matt smiled ever so softly again.

“Speaking of the Force,” he began. “I want to get you a real leather thong for your crystal. That boot lace just isn’t cutting it, hun.” _ Oh my God. _

“Wow, okay, are you hatin’ on my DIY skills? My craftsmanship not up to par?” I teased him, and he laughed.

“It’s a boot lace. You gotta admit, it deserves better!”

“Alright then, you snob. Let’s go get me a real leather thong.” And I stood up, chucked away the rind of my melon, took a swig of water, and handed the bottle back to him. He was smirking at me as he stood up and took it. Yes, before you ask, my brain was full of underwear jokes. I still don’t know how I managed to hold off actually saying them. Probably because there was no underwear in space, and he wouldn’t get it. He offered me his hand again, and I blushed (again) and took it, and we ventured back out into the stalls.

The Kallerian shop keeper we chose had a beautiful array of jewelry and gear, from belts to boots. He was also pretty adorned himself, with wraps on the weird dangly things that fell from his fishlike head and lots of bangles on.

“Easy for you, no problem!” he chortled. “May I see the stone?”

“Er, sure,” I replied, not actually sure at all. I looked over to Matt, but he was eyeing the speeder saddles and pouches, so I pulled the bootstrap necklace out from under my clothes. The crystal was no longer bright red, having shifted instead to a wine-purple color and dimmed a little. The Kallerian’s eyes widened when he saw it.

“Oh, and how is this? Your crystal must be very rare!” he exclaimed, reaching out his three-fingered hand to take it. I felt reeeeaalllly fucking hesitant, all of a sudden.

“Please be careful with it,” I replied, looking at him sharply. “It, um, it was my mother’s.” Yeah, that seemed legit. Heirloom jewelry was a thing pretty much anywhere, right?

“Tipluk is always careful! Come come, let me get it set for you, and done up proper,” he reassured me, and I guess to be fair he took it from me very gingerly and looked at it closely. “Must remove the string, yes?” 

“Sure, go ahead.” I watched him like a hawk, anxious. He pulled the bootstrap off, and motioned me over to a little work table towards the back of the shop. 

“Your mother must be very special, to have such a special thing,” he commented as he sat down and started going about selecting his materials. “You like the gold, or the copper perhaps?” 

“The gold, I think.” _ Just get it done, _ I thought ruefully.

“Excellent, very beautiful. The wrap will not harm the stone, this I promise.” And then Tipluk was winding a little gold-colored wire all around the crystal in a netlike pattern, and it all looped together at the top to make a ring for the leather thong. “The old Kallerian style of beloved-necklaces, which are promised in life-bonding,” he explained. “For honoring your mother.”

“Oh, thank you. It’s very lovely,” I replied, and I wasn’t bluffing at least. It looked great. He grinned in a self-satisfied way and pulled a little stand full of strips of leather over from a nearby table.

“I think black, to match your clothes,” he murmured, and I just nodded. Mercifully quickly, the whole thing was done. He tied the thong off with a knot that he then reinforced it with something that looked like wax, or some sort of sealant that soaked into the leather and dried. He offered it to me very proudly, and I took it back with a huge sigh of relief.

“Wow. That’s beautiful,” came a deep voice, and Matt was standing behind me and looking at the necklace, then looking at me with a smile.

“Like it’s wearer, yes?” Tipluk said to Matt, wagging his eyebrow cheerfully. For a split second, I was annoyed that I was getting hit on by strange men even in a galaxy far, far away. But then Matt was taking the necklace out of my hand and gently, sweetly placing it over my head and around my neck.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly, smiling at me. My heart started pounding in my chest so loud I was afraid they could both hear it.

“Perhaps a life-bond promise for you, eh?” the shop keeper added, and then Matt was turning bright red.

“Oh no, that’s, um…”

“We’re just friends,” I reassured the Kallerian, even though I’m pretty sure I was turning bright red myself.

“Of course, sure, sure,” he clucked, chuckling to himself like he obviously knew better. “Come make payment, unless you need something else?” Matt shuffled over to the register, avoiding my gaze. He paid, and Tipluk gave a delighted chortle. “You have a beautiful day, and come back anytime!” I realized that Matt was already walking through the shop exit. He was going awfully fast, which made me a little nervous.

“Thank you,” I called back at the shop keeper before following out the door. “Hey, Matt, are you--”

In front of me there were _ four fucking storm troopers _ , all brandishing their weapons. Matt was standing still as a stone, hands held in front of him. _ Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

“Put your hands in the air!” one buzzed sharply as I slunk up behind Matt.

“What’s going on?” I asked in a harsh whisper, holding my hands up on either side of me.

“There must be a mistake,” he replied to the trooper, rather than to me. “I rented the speeder, from the lot out below.” _ Wait, is this seriously some kind of rental-bike misunderstanding, right now? _

“We have to check your transaction history to confirm that. You’ll have to come with us.”

“Fellas, fellas!” Matt replied, waving his raised hands a little. “Listen, I’m just going to return the bike later today, you can put a tracker on it if you want.” But one of the troopers was already approaching with a set of cuffs, and another was preparing a second set. For me, obviously. My hackles rose, and I shot past panic in a way that only trauma can make me do.

“That’s not procedure, we’re gonna have to check--”

“Excuse me,” I said suddenly and sharply, stepping between Matt and the trooper. All around me, the air felt taut. I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to keep them away from me, and my precious cinnamon roll too. “There’s no call for this. We want no trouble. Has someone accused us of theft of the speeder?”

“No, but that speeder was reported missing ten days ago,” one of the bucketheads confirmed. 

“Then you’d better take it up with the management of the rental lot how it got there, because we just arrived today.” I felt like I was listening to myself speak, like I was giving _ orders _ all the sudden.

“The protocol--”

“Is a waste of valuable resources in this case, and a waste of all our time. You will take the speeder back to your impound lot or whatever the fuck it is, and leave us alone.” I glared at the facsimile of a face on the helmet in front of me. “Now.” For a moment, everything was a tense silence, and all the people who had been walking nearby were now backing off and giving the troopers a wide berth, so even the background noise had hushed. The kyber crystal around my neck was glowing brighter than it had been moments before.

“I will take the speeder back to my impound lot or whatever the fuck it is, and leave you alone. Now,” the scratchy voice of the trooper parroted, and they all turned around in the direction of the landing plaza and marched away. I took a deep breath.

“Wow,” said Matt, and I turned around to face him again. His hands were lowered, and he was looking at me with surprise. “That was, um, unexpected.”

“Well, I don’t take too kindly to restraints,” I explained, offering a thin smile. “Too many involuntary trips to the psych ward for that shit.” He nodded, and rubbed the back of his head. 

“Yeah. Thanks. Now we have an awful long walk back to the shuttle, though.”

“Oh.” Shit, that hadn’t occurred to me. Whatever was going on with a stolen speeder, I wanted to close the loophole and make sure we were well out of it, so letting them take the speeder seemed like the best option. “Well, damn. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s not the walk that worries me,” Matt replied. “It’s just, well. We’ll be late getting back. Kylo’s gonna be pissed.” 

“Um, can you… talk to him? Is that a dumb question?”

“It’s not, but I can only sorta talk to him, if he gets active later. I can contact the Supremacy from the shuttle though, and give orders as him,” he mused.

“To cover our asses, and his? That sounds good to me. Don’t they think he and I are out on some kinda training mission anyway?”

“Yeah, so I guess I’ll just tell them we’re running over.” He looked uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong? It seems like we got our out,” I asked him.

“I just feel bad for fucking up Kylo’s plans. And I feel bad already for if he takes it out on you later,” he confessed, frowning. _ Wow, what a sweet baby angel. _

“It’s okay, Matt. I can handle Kylo rage. I’ve done it before and I’ll prolly have to do it again, for some reason or another. At least this time I can brag on my, uh, skills.” I grinned and winked at him, and he smiled a little.

“Okay. I still feel bad, but. Thank you.” _ Please don’t feel bad. You should never have to feel bad. You deserve only good and happy things. _ I held out my hand to him invitingly.

“Wanna get some dinner before we start hiking?” I asked. His smile got bigger, and he took my hand in his large one.

“Okay. Follow your nose, I guess!” he chuckled, and I couldn’t stop smiling as I tugged him with me through the streets in search of dinner. I couldn’t help but feel like we’d narrowly avoided a mess, and I’d managed to get us out of it. Maybe Kylo would be mad, but maybe he’d also be proud. Plus now I got to spend even more time with Matt, so what’s wrong with that???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was a long one BUT OMG I LOVE MATT. 
> 
> spoilers: the fluff continues in the next chapter :3


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are shuttle blues and not-so-subtle cues.

As Matt and I walked along the dusty and incredibly fucking long road back to the shipyard, the dual suns were sinking down and turning the Kallerian sky all kinds of colors. He was walking alongside me with the bag of our purchases slung over his shoulder, eating another one of the purple orange-pineapple fruits. He had a thing for purple fruits, I guess.

“I bet I can find something that’s _ basically _ a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or at least find something that’s basically peanut butter and something that’s basically jelly, then smush ‘em both onto something that’s basically bread,” I was saying while he chuckled around his bite. “I can be very single-minded, yanno.”

“Oh, I know,” he mumbled with his mouth full, smirking and holding his wrist up to cover the sight of half-chewed purple fruit from my virgin eyes.

“It’d be worth it,” I continued. “Totally worth it just to see your face when you eat it. It’s gonna change your life, dude.” 

“I really wanna know, now, what’s so special about this sandwich. So now you’ve basically built it up so much, it better not end up being gross.” He took the last bite of his fruit, and chucked the core of it out into the dust by the road.

“It won’t. It’s the best sandwich ever. And I like most sandwiches, so I’m not just saying that because it’s the only one I like or anything, either.” 

“Yeah, but how can you--” He froze mid-sentence, looking dead ahead through the dusky shadows to the shipyard which were were finally approaching. I stopped and looked, but saw nothing. 

“Um, Matt?” I asked quietly, and he held up a single finger as though asking me to wait. I followed his gaze again, trying to see what he’d noticed. My hand fell over the lump in my shirt where my crystal was hanging on its new necklace. _ What the fuck is he looking at? Whatever this is, can it not be happening, right now? I’m extremely over getting scared to death about this trip blowing up in our faces. _

“Do you sense it?” he whispered to me finally. I stood, straining to either see or hear anything but the quickly fading light on the barren terrain between here and the shuttles. Then, I realized that he meant with the Force, because I did sense something. I had no idea what it was, but it was a pull on my attention. So, I followed the pull, which ended up being awfully specific in origin.

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “It’s coming from six ships to the left of ours.”

“I feel it too.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Not sure. I just hope Kylo doesn’t have to come out,” he murmured. I felt my throat tighten. I’d seen Matt take over when Kylo had been out front, but never the other way around. It seemed like the kinda thing he’d only do if we were in serious danger. And I didn’t wanna be stuck with Big Angry Kylo inside a tiny shuttle, to be honest. I continued to try and pay attention to whatever the fuck the Force was talking about.

Then, I saw a figure exiting the ship in question, followed by a little round droid…

“Oh fuck me, are you kidding?” I cursed in a whisper. It had to be a BB unit. Which, when paired with a Force tug like that…

“Who is that?” Matt was murmuring. “I’ve never sensed that before.” 

For a second, time stopped. _ Wait. If Matt doesn’t recognize that droid, or that feeling… That means Matt and Kylo really don’t have the same presence in the Force at all, and that shit I was making up before turns out to be true. Shit. Fuck. _ I wasn’t sure what to do. Surely Kylo was copiloting now, right? Matt said that they had their own reactions and feelings when in the copilot place. But not memories. Part of me thought, _ If you’re helping Kylo, you should say something. His mission right now is to find her, and you don’t know how involved she is in his possible redemption arc. _ The other part of me thought, _ If he knows she’s here, he will flip his fucking lid, and who knows what the fuck could happen? Like, shit could hit the fan in a big way and I’m sooooo not ready for that, right now. Why is she here? Oh, who gives a shit. That’s not the part of the story I get to know about, I guess. If we leave, she might spot the shuttle and follow us to the ship? Or at least know First Order people were here on the ground. But if Matt isn’t connected to her, and we stay put, then she won’t know _ he’s _ here, at least. _

“I think maybe we oughta lay low. I dunno what this feeling means, but that person is taking a speeder to the city. I’m not sure we’re in any condition to wrangle a spy, or a bounty hunter, or someone who’s come to steal my crystal or something. If we just stay here until that ship leaves, we might not have to find out.” That was my pitch, and I was sticking with it. Matt watched the figure disappear behind the other ships, then looked at me.

“Yeah. That jeweler looked at your crystal like it was worth a hell of a lot more than we paid him to fix it up,” he replied, and I felt relief wash over me. _ Oh, thank God. _ I nodded.

“You wanna just post up in the shuttle for a bit?”

“Sounds good, let’s hurry though.” And we scurried over to the shuttle, making sure nobody was around before we got inside and locked the door behind us. Matt tapped on a switch in the hangar that gave a faint light, and gently put our bag of shopping on the floor. I immediately made for the cockpit, but didn’t try to turn on any lights. I managed to just barely catch sight of a speeder zooming away from the shipyard on the same road we’d taken that morning. I wondered faintly if all the speeders in that lot were stolen, and heard Matt come in behind me.

“Is he gone?” he asked me quietly.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Wonder how long _ he’ll _ be there.” I emphasized the pronoun just a little. _ That is definitely not a girl whose name rhymes with ‘bae,’ nope. Totally just some guy the Force wants us to stay away from. _ “What time is it?”

“2200 hours.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Matt sighed. “I’m sorry, Aeon.”

“Sorry for what? For a perfect day?” I asked, smiling at him.

“But it didn’t go according to plan entirely, we almost got arrested, had to walk the whole way back to the shuttle, and now we might have to hang out here all night before it’s safe to leave. We might have to _ sleep _ here,” he insisted. _ Oh no, I might have to sleep in a tiny cramped little shuttle with Matt, whatever shall I do... _

“Yeah, but we found out how good I am at Jedi mind tricks when threatened,” I laughed, “and we got to see a binary sunset, and I got to educate you about sandwiches, and... it was perfect, Matt. Things don’t have to go according to plan to be perfect.” Now I was beaming at him in the low light, watching his cheeks turn pink.

“Well, okay. I guess when you put it like that…” He rubbed the back of his head, and looked at the floor bashfully.

Then came another time-freezing moment, a moment where I felt like I spent a full hundred years thinking about how close he was, how dreamy the lighting was as the day faded outside, how very much alone we were. How so _ very _ easy it would be to kiss him, feel his hands touching me, run my fingers through his hair. My hands started shaking a little, but I had no idea if it was from nerves or just good old fashioned pining.

“Lemme contact the ship, and set up the hangar for us to sleep, or try to anyhow,” he said, and turned to exit the cockpit and fumble around with his datapad, sending a voice recording I didn't quite hear before he began opening storage I didn’t even know was there. While he was pulling down blankets and sleeping bags, I stood there and watched him.

_ You have to talk about it when you’re sober, _ said the Voice of Reason. _ So you’re good on that front. You should talk about it before it happens, ideally, but honestly at this point just make sure you exchange fuckin’ words about it at all and I’ll be happy. And please, for the love of God, don’t have sex. Not on the first date, or whatever this is. You know that’s a bad habit you’ve been trying to break. Just because you’re in a fictional universe doesn’t mean you should slack on that. Please. _ I felt like it was pep-talking me. I took in a deep, slow breath. _ Bold of you to assume I have the guts to do literally anything about this right now, _ I thought back.

“Aeon? You okay?” Matt was asking me, and I realized I’d been standing there just looking at him like a dingus while my brain spun around. He was standing, having taken his jacket off, with those gorgeous arms gettin’ shown off by his white tee. His glasses were hung on his shirt collar, blonde hair flopped down into his face. He was holding a sleeping bag that he’d half unrolled, and had the little bungee cable thing in his mouth while he looked at me. He was so goddamn motherfucking perfect, I wanted to die.

“Me? Yeah. I’m fine.” I replied dreamily, absently touching my kyber crystal again. “Just, yanno. Appreciating you.”

“Oh,” he murmured, face flushing. He looked around at where there was already another sleeping bag on the floor, along with a big blanket and another blanket that was rolled up. Tugging the bungee cable out of his mouth, he hastily added to the mess by flinging out the material in his hands like he hoped it would land flat and neat on the ground. It didn’t. I couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Let me help you, nerd,” I said, going over to kneel and start shuffling the pile of sleeping stuff around on the ground. When I was done, it took up most of the hangar floor, scrunched between the two rows of seats on either side of the space.

“Wow. Much better. Cozy, even,” he remarked with a little grin as I stood up beside him to survey my work. I’d left the rolled blanket the way it was, as a makeshift pillow that would be long enough for both of us. I looked up at him and smiled.

“Not cozy yet, not till I get these fuckin’ shoes off,” I informed him, and immediately started unlacing my boots. He laughed, and did the same. He pulled off his suspenders, and placed them and his glasses next to his boots. I unsnapped my cowl, but that was about it as far as getting comfy was concerned for me. I had new clothes in the shopping bag, but I didn’t wanna sleep in new clothes! Hell, I didn’t wanna sleep in _ any _ clothes, but…

“Well,” he said, still standing awkwardly like he wasn’t sure what to do next. “Do you, um, do you prefer a certain side?”

“Um, no, no, I’m good with whatever,” I stammered. _ SAY THE WORRRRDS!! _

“Okay, well,” he said again, and then he stepped one of his enormous feet onto one side of the blankets gingerly, followed by the other, and sat down there cross-legged. He looked back up and me and smiled, and patted his hand onto the other side as if to signal that I could use that side, if I wanted to. I slid down to the floor, sitting next to him on ‘my side.’ There was so little room that our knees were touching the seats on the edges, and touching each other’s knees in the middle. _ OHHHH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO. YOU HAVE TO SAY SOMETHING. YOU GIANT FUCKING CLOWN, YOU ENTIRE IDIOT, SPEAK!! _I didn’t look at him, just sat next to him with our knees touching.

“Um, Matt?” I asked him, and I could barely hear my own voice.

“Hm? What?” he replied, his deep voice all low and quiet.

“Do you, um. Do you remember when I was high on that candy, the other day?” _ As though he’s forgotten, somehow?_

“Oh, yeah. Yeah I remember that.”

“Do you remember when I tried to explain about how I, um, how…” _ WHY IS THIS SO HARD??_

“How you…?” he prompted.

“How I liked you?” I finished hurriedly. 

“Oh, yeah. And I said, um, that’s what friends do, right?”

“Yeah, and then, I, um… I said…” I felt like my throat was clamping down, clenching itself shut against the million fears and doubts that ran through my head at that moment.

“You said ‘no,’ like I wasn’t getting it?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.” _ Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

“And then you tried, well you tried to explain a bunch of stuff way too fast and I--”

“You told me we could talk about it when I was sober,” I said, as though that though had only just occurred to me, as opposed to ringing in my head constantly ever since.

“Yeah, I did. Did you, um, wanna talk about it now?” he asked, and his voice got even softer. I heard his head turn towards me, which only solidified my decision to continue staring at my feet.

“Well, kinda, yeah,” I mumbled, feeling like my guts were vibrating.

“Okay, we can talk about it now.” He sounded so level that I wasn’t sure how oblivious he actually was. Did he know what I meant, and was just playing dumb, or??

“Cool.” I took a breath. _ That would be your cue, dumbass, _ I thought to myself.

“So, um, what wasn’t I getting?” he asked.

“I, um, well. It’s not like, a big deal or anything, but…” Wow. I was failing miserably at this for the first time in years. I looked at my feet.

“Mkay,” he murmured reassuringly. I felt like time froze, my throat closed, and all the thoughts in my head that had been warring with each other this entire goddamn time all just… shut up. Total silence. _ Hello? HELP ME?_

“Um. Sorry, I went totally blank just there.” _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK. _

“It’s okay, take your time,” he said sweetly. _ WHAAAAAAA STOP BEING PERFECT! _

“I just, listen. I don’t know how I got here, or how I’m gonna get back home, but. Um. I…” Finally I looked back up at him, and from what I could see in the dim shuttle lighting he was just sitting there, waiting patiently, not looking directly at me but glancing back every now and then. He swallowed, though, which made me wonder if he was nervous, too. “I just wanted to say that I really like you and you mean a lot to me and uhhhh also if you wanted you could, um, come visit me at home I guess, when we find it, I mean there’s no pressure but um…”

Yeah. I know. I chickened out. Even the Voice of Reason was judging me a little.

“Oh,” he replied, seeming surprised. “I um, sure. I mean I would love to come see you sometime. Whenever you find your way back.” Was he disappointed? Relieved? I couldn’t fucking tell!!! I looked back at my feet.

“I’d like that,” I mumbled. _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck you GIANT BABY YOU ARE NEVER GONNA GET ANOTHER CHANCE LIKE THIS! Wait, are you? I guess he’s technically Supreme Leader, or rather his alter is, but he COULD do whatever he wanted and you could have some other cute date thing… but still this is just a PERFECT DAY! COME ON!!_

“Well then I definitely will,” he replied, low voice all soft as he gave me a little smile. He swallowed again. _ Whyyyyyy! _ “Should I cut the lights? There’s a little, um, like a little emergency light that never turns off in the hall, will that bother you?”

“No,” I assured him, deflated. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” He leaned up and touched the control pad on the wall, and the hangar got even dimmer. The light in the hall was just a tiny little red light that barely illuminated anything anyway, and there was moonlight streaming into the window in the cockpit but it didn’t much reach where we were. I slid underneath the blanket, laying stiffly on my back because I felt like a total fucking idiot and I still couldn’t read Matt’s reaction for shit. I mean, other than his usual awkward sweetness. I was a little bit furious at myself, too, I won’t lie. 

Matt slid under the covers and also laid on his back, like he wasn’t sure what to do. We were so close that our elbows were touching anyway, which only added to how profoundly stiff I felt. I wanted to cue to him that it was okay if we were touching. I obviously wasn’t gonna do shit about it, anyway…

“Aeon?” he asked suddenly. My heart picked up.

“Yeah?” 

“You, uh, you don’t talk in your sleep or anything, do you?” he asked. “Or walk in your sleep? Or anything else like that I should know about?” I couldn’t help but chuckle just a little.

“God, I hope not,” I replied, and he started to chuckle, too. I immediately felt a little better. “You don’t snore, do you?”

“I have no idea,” he confessed, chuckling even more.

“If you do, I’ll tell you. And if I do, you can tell me. Deal?”

“Yeah, okay. That sounds fair.” He turned his head towards me, and in the gloom I thought he was smiling for real. “Is this comfy enough? You’re not cold or anything, are you?” _ Wow oh my God stop being the nicest human?_

“I’m okay. I’m a little chilly because I didn’t wear sleeves, but. I’ll be alright.”

“You can lay close to me, if you’re cold. I’m always warm.” My heart picked up yet again. _ What? Is this.. Is he…?? _

“You’re not gonna like, kick me in your sleep or anything are you?” I asked him, grinning. It was almost deflection, I guess? Well, it made him laugh. Which was the only goal.

“No, I think you’re good, there. Can’t promise with the snoring, but I won’t kick.”

“Okay, that’s good. Thanks. Do you, um sleep on your back, or?”

“Well, no, I usually don’t.” He turned over, towards me, onto his side. He gathered the blanket into his hands and bunched them up over his mouth. “I sleep like this.” I couldn’t help but smile even more.

“You’re cute. You’re adorable. And you’re so nice. Thank you, Matt,” I told him. Now that I had given up on trying to Tell Him How I Really Felt, apparently, this was easy to say. Ugh. Anyway. I turned away from him, and made the paradoxically bold decision to scoot back against him and assume little spoon status. _ Fuck it. I tried. _ Maybe I could try again in the morning.

“Oh,” I heard him just barely mumble in surprise, like so quiet I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard it. I had expected to be happy with just feeling how close we were, how our feet were touching, his hands against my back. But then he went and shifted his arms, and scooched a little closer, and his whole chest was against my whole back, and I stopped breathing.

“Um,” he said, and I realized belatedly that his arms were sort of awkwardly positioned, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Do you wanna… maybe, lay your head on…?”

“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled, and I lifted my head and then his _ huge fucking arm _ was under it, with the rolled up blanket there, and I laid my head back on it, and _ oh my fuCKING GOD HIS BICEP FUCK PLEASE KILL ME. _ Then his other arm was draped extremely gingerly over my waist. There was something clearly awkward about it, but my brain was exploding all the same. For a moment, we were still, our breath coming so shallow I couldn’t even hear it.

“This okay?” he asked, a little nervously.

“Yeah, ‘s good,” I murmured. 

“Mk.” Again, silence. I don’t know how long I laid there, trying to think of something else to say. But then he became less stiff, and I wondered if he was finally getting comfortable. His arm curled a little tighter around me._ Ohmigosh! _

Then, I heard his breath. It was the faintest sound, like just shy of a little tiny snore. He was totally asleep. For a split second, I was disappointed. Not with him, with myself, obviously. I would never be disappointed with Matt, are you kidding? Anyway, then in his sleep he curled in even closer, which was completely exhilarating, and I just laid there and basked in how cozy and wonderful it was. Sure, I totally bitched out of my confession, but hell. He smelled good, too. 

I slowly drifted to sleep, one hand on my kyber crystal, full of the closest thing to joy I’d felt in a very long time. 

\-----

When I woke up, my eyes slowly fluttering open as a streak of sunlight from down the hallway illuminated the hangar, I was delighted to remember that I’d fallen asleep cuddled up with Matt. His warm body was pressed around me, one arm still curled over my waist and the other still tucked beneath my head, like his only movement in the night had been to get closer and closer, wrapping me up like a human burrito. He was still asleep, his breath a gentle breeze on my neck. _ Okay, I’ll take this. Too baby to make out, but this is fine. _

Eventually he started to stir and wake up, I thought, but then he curled up even closer and pressed his nose into my neck to nuzzle it. I wanted to scream, just a little. Or a lot. _ If I die here, that’s okay. _ A few moments later he stirred again, like he was actually waking up this time, stretching out one foot and making cute little sleepy morning sounds. _ AaaaAHHH! _

As he shifted, I turned a little, and stretched my limbs, and totally didn’t pretend I was still half-asleep so I could lean my head back against him, nope. 

“Mm. Morning,” I greeted him in scratchy morning-voice. He groaned a little, nose still pressed into my neck, and sighed. Then his head leaned back, so I decided to turn a little more and get a look at adorable sleepy morning-Matt while I still had a chance.

I was not expecting his hair to be black, and it almost spooked me for a second before I remembered that his blonde dye faded after a certain amount of time. His eyes were still shut, and the arm he’d kept around me turned loose so he could rub his eyelids.

“Hrgh, where am I?” he murmured, and his eyes fluttered open and struggled to focus. _ Well that’s weird. Did he forget or something? _ But then, his eyes opened fully, and I looked into them. And I knew immediately who was looking back. 

“Uh--”

“Maker!” he swore, and I swear we both jumped three feet in the air and in opposite directions. “What the--”

“Shit! Kylo!” _ What the fuck! Why did THAT happen? _Suddenly, I remembered why we’d slept on the ship in the first place. _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK! _He was staring at me, his expression full shock and confusion, and then he glanced around.

“Is this the shuttle you took to Kaller? _ Yesterday_?” he asked, anger rising in his voice. 

“Yes, but it’s okay, we rang the Supremacy already and told them we’d be back today,” I told him hurriedly. _ Please don’t blow up please don’t blow up please don’t blow up! _ He glanced around, then down at the nest of blankets and sleeping bags, then down at his clothes.

“Did you--”

“No!” _ No I did NOT have sex with Matt! Tragically! _He looked at me and narrowed his eyes.

“Why were you here overnight, Aeon?” he asked, voice growly but less loud and angry than I’d honestly been expecting. 

“We, um, we were forced to walk back here from the city due to a misunderstanding over the speeder we rented.” That was true, at least.

“And you chose to sleep after that?” He wasn’t buying it.

“Okay, I thought- I’m not sure, but Matt thought too, that there might’ve been someone here looking for my kyber crystal, or possibly it could have been a Resistance spy, I’m not sure which.” He was still eyeing me critically. I pulled on my necklace and held it up to show him. “The jeweler said it was very rare and special, which made me nervous, and I felt something in the Force last night--”

“You felt something?”

“Yeah, here. In the shipyard. I wanted to lie low in case whoever it was was looking for us.” _ It wasn’t your old would-be flame, either, definitely probably not. _

“Who was it?” _ Uuugh. _

“I don’t know,” I said, looking him full in the face. It wasn’t a lie- I didn’t know for sure that it was Rey. I just felt a strange, strong presence and saw a BB unit. But I kinda felt like an asshole, anyway. He continued to look at me strangely. I felt a sense of prodding suddenly, like my thoughts were getting jumbled around.

“Hey! None of that!” I shouted, and I felt like I was slamming a really heavy door in my brain. “You promised no mind-reading!” He frowned, and looked slightly guilty.

“Sorry,” he growled. “I just… I wish I’d been the one to sense it. I would’ve known what it was, and what to do.” _ Okay, well, he pushed a boundary but he withdrew as soon as I reinforced it, so. This is progress, technically. Oof. _

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed, my hackles lowering. “It’s all fine, though, I’m sure. Knowing my brain, I might’ve just been getting paranoid.” I sighed. “We can go back now, though.” 

“We _ are _ going back now.” He turned and started rifling through Matt’s-- his?-- stuff for his usual clothes. “If you’ll clean this up, I’ll get us ready for takeoff.”

“Um, sure.” Had he just almost-asked me to do something, instead of ordering me to do it? That was odd. He found the clothes he wanted, and marched up to the cockpit to do his thing. I started pulling the blankets off the floor to fold them, finding the little storage crannies Matt had pulled them out of and stuffing everything at least mostly back where it belonged. The engines were humming loudly by the time I was done. I decided not to change into my new clothes or anything, and debated just sitting back in the hangar for the entire trip. _ This is sooooo fucking uncomfortable. _ I really, really, REALLY had not counted on waking up next to Kylo instead of Matt. What even caused that, anyway?

Then we were kicking off into the air, and I held onto the wall for a moment and shut my eyes. When our flight smoothed out, I glanced up at the back of Kylo’s head in the cockpit through the hallway. Sighing, I decided I’d better not hide from him the whole damn way back.

When I sat in the co-pilot’s chair, he was silent at first. He’d donned his regular old Supreme Leader duds, and was looking with his signature half-scowl out the front window of the shuttle. At that moment, it finally occurred to me that _ he _ had been the one nuzzling my neck this morning. Not Matt. _ Fuck. Fuck that’s fucking weird. Oh God, it was weird enough before, now it’s ACTUALLY weird. _

“Did you… have a good time?” he asked slowly, uncomfortably. I looked at him, surprised.

“Um, yeah, actually. It was great. Got a few things I really needed, ate a lot of weird fruits, saw two suns set, rode a speeder bike for the first time…” I felt guilty for carrying on while he sat there and didn’t look at me, though, so I stopped. 

“Good.” It was short, clipped even, and he looked uncertain. “I’m…”

“Nothing happened between me and Matt, I promise,” I blurted out. _ Shit. _ Now, he looked at me. Then he looked back out the window, then back at me again.

“Are you disappointed?” he asked. I had no idea if he was being a dick or not, which was disorienting as hell.

“Why would you ask me that?” It was too early for me to not be this blunt, honestly.

“I just…” He frowned, and sighed. “Do you… _ like _ Matt?” 

_ Why the FUCK does Kylo Ren understand that emphasis on the word ‘like’ and Matt fucking? Doesn’t??_

“Um,” I replied, totally terrified of the answer.

“You can tell me, you know.”

“Can I?” _ Why the entire FUCK would he want to know? Is this just misdirection of how HE was so snuggly this morning?_

“Yes, you can. You haven’t told _ him _ yet though, have you?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Are you making fun of me?” I asked, mildly horrified. “Is this even okay, Kylo? I mean, really?”

“Matt and I are different people, Aeon. He hasn’t been able to be himself, not openly anyway, for a long time. I’m not going to deny him a life.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you.” Was he granting permission, or something?

“It doesn’t mean that I will have a similar interest in you, if he reciprocates.” Oh. Alright, then.

“That’s… fine. You’re my teacher. It’s… probably better you didn’t, right?” I raised an eyebrow at him, now._ Or have you not heard of ethical behavior, since you were already trying to wife the last person you offered to teach? _

“Probably.” His face had gone fully opaque, and I had no idea what he was really thinking or feeling. 

“Okay, well. That’s good, then, I guess.” I murmured. I had no fucking idea what else to say. For a long moment, it was very quiet in the cockpit.

“Your necklace looks nice,” Kylo said out of the blue, very stiffly.

“Uh. Thanks,” I replied, flabbergasted. _ This dude has no fuckin’ idea how to be a person, does he? _ “Matt got you some new boots.”

“Oh, that was helpful of him.” Silence. This conversation was fucking arduous, y’all. I could not make heads or tails of it. Was he being weird because he was accidentally nuzzling me this morning? Or was I just thinking that because I was hating myself for being kinda into it? Was I not making a healthy separation between him and Matt, the way they both clearly wanted me to? Or was I just that attracted to someone who was as unpredictable and violent as Matt was gentle and kind? I’d never known anyone with dissociative identities before, not this closely. And I was terrified I was going to do something wrong, somehow, with this whole dual-relationship thing. Especially when both elicited such fucking profound and contrasting emotional responses, and the ONLY overlap was how attractive they both were. _ AAAARGH. _

Finally, the planet passed fully out of our view and the _ Supremacy _ started to become visible against the starfield. I sighed.

“I’m sorry if we fucked anything up with your schedule, by the way. Matt is too, obviously.” I was mostly apologizing so he wouldn’t be mad at Matt, because I adore Matt and I want to protect him.

“It’s alright,” he replied quietly. Thankfully, he didn’t offer anymore weird/forced niceties. I wasn’t sure if he meant them or not, anyway. I would take straightforward, pissed off Kylo over unreadable Kylo any day.

“When do you want to have our next lesson? I’ve been practicing the routine.” I was desperately trying to return to a remotely normal dynamic.

“We’ll meet again tomorrow, I have a few matters to check in on today.” He gave a little nod, and continued looking out the window. Ah, yes. Much better. 

“Sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops..............!
> 
> honestly who even knows what the fuck is up in Kylo's head, most of the time. not even him. :3


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Force lowkey ships it.

“Aeon Flux, your scans have started to become more active again since your visit to Kaller. Did you experience any hallucinations while on the planet?” Lucky was asking. I was only half paying attention, because I was ruminating all to hell about the truly bizarre experiences of my Accidental Morning With Kylo.

“Hm? Nah.”

“Any seizures?”

“Mm.”

“I do not understand.”

“Hm.”

“Aeon Flux, are you aware you are pregnant?” My head whipped over.

“What the FUCK?”

“I see this has gotten your attention. You are very distracted this afternoon, Aeon Flux,” the droid noted dryly. I glared at it.

“A lot happened down there, Lucky. I’m just… processing.”

“Your scans were indicating a much more suppressed neurological response for several days. Now they appear to be picking up again. I am concerned about your risk of experiencing another seizure.” I sighed. 

“I don’t know--”

Without warning, in the middle of my goddamn sentence and everything, I was no longer on the _ Supremacy _. I was now sitting on a hunk of metal in a torrential storm, or maybe it was just huge saltwater waves crashing all around me, I wasn’t sure. I was in the flotsam and jetsam of some enormous machine, being battered on all sides by an angry sea. The roar of it was deafening.

In front of me was a vast expanse of whatever technology I was sitting on, like a cliff that dropped into the water that was full of metal. Before I could even begin to panic or try and figure out what the hell was going on, I saw a figure running up towards the precipice. 

It was Rey.

_ What? What is happening right now? I feel like I teleported, but that’s not a thing in Star Wars?_

Not long after she approached the cliff and turned back around to look behind her, I saw Kylo Ren walking out of the torrent making directly towards her. In the crash of the waves, it was hard to see what was going on-- until two light sabers lit up, of course.

“Wait!” I cried, and as per usual I leapt up to try and do something even though I had no idea what the fuck to do, exactly. Immediately my feet slipped on the extremely wet surface of rusted metal, of course, and I slammed forward onto my elbows and knees. Which hurt like hell, but more importantly I landed on a slick white floor.

“Aeon Flux! Are you alright?” came a tinny robotic voice through my slight daze, and then I looked up into the abrasive, sterile light of the medical bay.

“Ow,” I groaned, and pushed myself upright only to stagger back against the hospital bed I’d evidently just jumped off of. 

“Please sit,” Lucky instructed me. “You are unwell.” I scooted back onto the bed, clutching the edge with my hands.

“I assume I just had the seizure you were worried about?” I asked it, thoroughly disgruntled. My elbows and knees throbbed.

“I believe so, Aeon Flux. You were within scanning range, so it appears we have a medical record of this episode.” 

“I saw something,” I said to the droid. “A vision, or a hallucination, or maybe they’re the same thing, I dunno.” 

“Another of the multi-ocular entities you have described previously?” _ Couldn’t you just call it a demon, Lucky? Is this a droid thing? _

“No. I was in another place. There was an ocean, and wreckage of something, maybe a ship? And Kylo was there, and… the girl. The girl he’s been looking for.” My guts churned suddenly. After what just happened on Kaller...

“Curious,” murmured the droid as it pulled results from the machine up on one of the myriad screens in the wall. “It appears you did have a seizure, Aeon Flux. But it is a most unusual one. And… that cannot be right. There must be a malfunction with the scanner.” I whipped my head around to look at it, and immediately regretted moving that quickly.

“Ow. What? What’s wrong?” Lucky was staring at the screen. 

“According to the results, your brain’s wave-particle fluctuation stopped entirely. All quantum entities were in wave form for fifty-seven seconds, and there is a clear superposition in the chart. However, as you were observably here in the medical bay for the duration of your seizure, that is impossible.” Brow knit, I just stared at it for a moment.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“To observe you requires a wave function collapse, which is an irreversible interaction of your quantum state with the classical environment as your two functions form an external superposition, which precludes any internal superposition in the--”

“Lucky. Please. Talk to me like I don’t have a fuckin’ degree in quantum physics. ‘Cuz I don’t. And even if I did, my fuckin’ head hurts.” I could almost see its face fall flat. 

“To _ grossly _ oversimplify, it would imply that you were in two places at once.” I blinked. _ Wait. Did Lucky just tell me that I’m Schrodinger’s self-insert? Also, how could I be seeing Kylo if I was in two places at once, when I’m pretty sure he’s upstairs either force-choking one of his officers or practicing his scowl? _

“Huh,” was all I said, totally unable to wrap my brain around the idea at that moment.

“How do you feel?” 

“Tired,” I replied immediately. 

“If you would like to take a rest here, I would like to observe you a little longer.” I nodded, and wriggled my way slowly onto the bed to lie down properly. Lucky was doing all sorts of things to the computers on the wall, and grumbling to itself about diagnostics and malfunctions. My brain, which had been so active before, now felt vaguely like soup. 

\-----

Walking into the training hall the next day, I was feeling antsy and my thoughts had started to pick up speed again. Kylo was there waiting for me, twirling one of the wooden swords around experimentally and tossing it into the air. Almost like he was having _ fun _, or something. He turned when I entered.

“Good afternoon, Aeon,” he greeted me, and despite his half-scowl and monotone it seemed almost cheerful. For him, anyhow. _ What is going on? Did he actually get laid or something? _

“Well dang. Mornin’ sunshine. We workin’ on this routine today? I think I actually got it memorized,” I replied, sticking to my usual slightly bratty but generally sincere tone.

“We’ll review the first routine today, yes. If you’ll get a waster--” Before he’d finished his sentence, a wooden sword flew off of its wall mount behind him and into my outstretched hand. I was feeling pretty confident, I guess. Kylo looked at me, not quite smirking again. “Alright. Move through the sequence the way you’ve been practicing.” 

I took a deep breath and started in the basic stance he’d showed me, and swung through the series of movements. I tried to be less lazy than I’d been while actually practicing, but I could tell by his stare that I wasn’t impressing him. 

“What?” I asked when I was done and that expression was still on his face. “I learned it!”

“You learned the movements but not how to make them. You have no form, no strength in your thrusts or parries, and you move slowly.” I felt my face get hot, and felt myself get angry.

“I--” But I cut myself off, paused, clamped my mouth shut and let out a slow exhale. _ You’re going to keep your cool, remember? Do not throw fuel on the Big Angry Fire. _ I decided to start over. “Can you show me the proper form again?” He looked at me like he was trying very hard not to yell at me that I was wasting time. I guess we were both putting in some effort, that day.

“Alright,” he agreed tersely, and marched over closer to me. “Take the basic stance I showed you.”

We started to move through the sequence, only in slow motion, and he actually talked me through every single motion in the routine and what it was for, and when I needed to be using my strength versus my agility. I know, right? When did Darth Tantrum decide to try being a decent teacher? There was one part I kept getting stuck on, though.

“No, twirl from the _ shoulder _ ! You keep twirling from your wrist, but your wrist is weaker. This move can make to strike your opponent or block a blaster bolt, but either way the impact of the other blade or the shot will push back hard on you, so you need to use more of your entire body’s strength. And take the step _ before _ you thrust,” he was saying to me as I tried for the tenth time, modeling the movement in slow-motion beside me. I huffed with frustration, and tried to move through the sequence again. “No, Aeon, stop. Just stop, wait.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, dropping my arms. I was getting mad at myself, and his tone wasn’t helping. Suddenly he dropped his own waster to the floor and walked around behind me, putting one gloved hand on my right wrist where I held the wooden sword. He lifted it up in the air keeping my elbow bent, and his other hand fell on my right shoulder.

“This shoulder is tight. Loosen it up some, move it around a little. Breathe,” he instructed, and I shut my eyes against the feeling of his coming so close to me. It was a weird feeling. I had no idea if it was good or bad. I took a deep breath, though, and tried to let go of the tension in my shoulder muscles. His hands weren’t harsh on me, they were actually pretty gentle but firmly guiding. “See, that’s much better. Now, left foot slightly in front, there you go. Arm begins here.” Now his hand guided my arm again, and the other hand left my right shoulder to land on my left shoulder, and he was standing very close behind me with his powerful torso just barely pressed up against my back, and _ is hot in here, or? _

“Um, okay,” I muttered. I was definitely flushed, but also something about the intensity of his focus meant that instead of getting distracted, it was more like I aligned with his energy? 

“Now, keep your shoulder open. Pull back, but just a little, just enough, there. Exactly. Now step forward--” both of our right legs moved in unison, “and _ push _ forward from your shoulder. The twirl starts here, see?” And his enormous gloved hand moved from my wrist to wrap around my much smaller hand on the hilt of the waster, pushing it along and twirling through the entire thrust. My whole body felt warm, and everywhere he touched me felt like it was electrifying me slightly. _ Wow okay wow why? _ But I wanted to get the damn thrust right so bad at the same time, dammit!

“One more time?” I asked, and he guided my hand back and we reset our feet and then we moved again through the whole thing, and I felt alive and focused and synchronized with him in the strangest way. Like, my jitteriness about being that close to him just melted away.

“You almost got it,” he urged, and then we reset one final time and now my muscles felt loose and ready, rather than tight and resistant, and he barely guided me at all as I moved through the twist. “Yes! Again!” he instructed, and in one fluid movement we reset and I moved through it again, feeling less and less like he was moving my limbs for me even though his hands stayed where they were and his body pressed closer to my back. “Again!” Set, step, whoosh! I was starting to feel strong, to feel sure of myself, to feel my heart thumping in my ears and heat rushing to my core. I paused there in the final extension of the pose, flushed in the power of my last thrust, of his hand on mine, of his body pressed against mine, and heard his heart beating in time with mine. _ Oh. _

I paused just long enough to feel real weird about it. I dropped my arm unceremoniously, and as though he’d also become aware of whatever the fuck was happening he let go of my hand and took a step back from me. I turned my head to look at him, but I couldn’t tell if he was as flustered as I’d just been. But our breath was coming in and out in unison, so. _ What the fuck. _

“Like that?” I asked, gripping my waster a little harder than necessary. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah, you really got it there at the end.” I nodded at him, feeling proud of myself, but a little too turned on-- yes, I admit it, I was totally turned on-- to do much about it.

“Thank you. You’re right, I was too tense.” _ Maybe a little pre-lesson tension relief is in order, I can think of a few ways… Oh God, shut UP, brain. _

“You let go of it quickly, though. Run through the whole thing again,” he instructed, and I took a deep breath and tried to bully through how flustered I was by channeling it into the routine movements. “Yes, now faster this time,” he urged, and I did it again. “That’s it. You’ve got it. That’s how you need to practice it every single time. Do you want to run through it with me as your opponent?” I stopped, and blinked. 

“Fight you?” A smirk cracked over my face. What a perfect way to release this fucking tension! “Hell yes. Let’s do it.” 

“I’m not gonna actually fight you, Aeon. It’s just a routine, so I’ll be showing you the accompanying counter-attacks--”

“I know, I know, but let’s do it!” I cut him off, bouncing on my toes a little. I was sure this was gonna be fun, and now my blood was pumping. Without wasting a moment, Kylo scooped up his waster from the floor and turned and took his stance. I fell into basic stance and then started the routine without waiting for a cue. _ Bring it, Angry Boy! _

One, two, three, underhand, step, parry, thrust, back, cut, parry, one motion after the other he met me with rhythmic and careful ‘attacks’, and I could tell he was definitely suppressing his strength. The tap-tap-tap of the blades against each other was satisfying, though, and I was starting to really enjoy myself. 

“Let’s go faster!” I urged, and I saw his ghost of a grin before we picked up the pace. _ Yes! This is awesome! _ Tap-tap-tap and step and twirl and parry and step and tap-tap-tap, like a dance, and I know he wasn’t trying to fight me or anything but it felt like we were two endless streams of energy, spiraling into each other only to bounce off gracefully and then come back together again. I was feeling strength and confidence like I hadn’t in a long time. Maybe it was a little manic, but I didn’t give a shit, obviously.

“Should we switch it up? Stop doing the sequence?” he challenged me as we continued to tap-tap-tap. 

“Surprise me,” I suggested, raising an eyebrow at him. He spun away and then stepped back towards me. All of a sudden, we were a flurry of taps and spins and twirls and parries, and that thing where I was sensing his intention before it was enacted started to happen, like I could almost tell a split-second before what he was going to do next. I had to react really fucking fast, though. When I started to finally try and push back, put him on defense, he responded instantly by flashing me a real, _ feral _ smirk. My face started to get hot, along with certain other parts of me, and I returned it in kind.

Tap-tap-step-twirl-back-twist-parry-tap-parry-tap and then it wasn’t the same kind of dance anymore, we were no longer in tandem. Now we were two wills, pushing and pulling one another, testing where we could push the limits. I didn’t know any fancy moves at all, and I knew he probably wasn’t busting any out and was going super easy on me, but I felt like our dual was for some kind of mental dominance rather than a test of skill. All my senses were alive, and full of _ him _. He started to growl.

“C’mon, you surprise _ me! _” he goaded me. “I know you can!”

“Oh yeah?” I decided to try something I had been pondering for a minute, and switched blade hands. He didn’t know it, but I’m ambidextrous. I totally practiced the routine with both hands. Just ‘cuz.

“Hah!” He seemed truly impressed by that, enough to let out a short _ laugh _(whoa) and start pushing me again, pushing because he wasn’t used to fighting someone left-handed. I grinned even more. Tap-parry-step-step-thrust-parry-tap-twirl-step-tap--

“How’s that for a surprise?” I crowed at him.

“You think you can keep it up?”

“Oh, I can keep it up.” He was not getting the double entendre there, but whatever.

“We’ll see,” he said. I huffed.

“You scared?” I teased him. I was definitely getting too cocky at that point, but that hadn’t even remotely occurred to me.

“You don’t scare me, little one.” _ Oh. Oh them’s fightin’ words, my dude. Kinda sexy fightin’ words but still. _

“Not yet,” I growled, and got more aggressive. He matched my energy immediately, almost eagerly. Tap-stepstep-parry-thrust-taptaptap-twirl-parry-thrust-step-tap--

“Did I offend you?” he goaded me, smirking again.

“Shut up and fight me,” I suggested. He seemed pleasantly surprised at this, and his smirk got darker as he deflected an even more aggressive attack from me.

“This isn’t a fight.”

“‘Cuz you playin’.”

“I’m _ teaching_,” he corrected mid-parry.

“Don’t be shy, Kylo!” Taptap-thrust-parrybackstep-tap-twirlparrythrust--

“Easy now,” he warned me, but I was full of manic energy, and I just pushed back harder. “Back off.” Taptaptwirl-parry-thrust-swing-tapback-twirl-thrustparrytaptaptaptaptaptap “Rey, you don’t--”

As soon as he said her name, my concentration broke, and he knocked my waster to the ground and whacked the shit outta my hand in the process. I didn’t even hiss or cry out in pain, only clutched it up close against me as I staggered a few steps back from him. _ What the fuck? Did he just call me REY? SERIOUSLY?? _I stared at him, equal parts shocked and furious. His eyes were wide, like he’d surprised himself. My hand throbbed, but I almost didn’t feel it.

“Did you--”

“Aeon, I’m sorry.” He cut me off so quickly, and so earnestly. The fact that I’d already called him out on this was the elephant in the room that we both knew well and good was right there. _ You’re not getting off that easy, fuckboy. _

“Seriously, Kylo?_ Seriously? _ We don’t even look alike!” I exclaimed, and I could feel myself escalating and whatever part of my brain there was left to regulate my behavior felt like it was watching the rest of me just take off down the runway, ready for liftoff at any moment.

“Aeon, I didn’t--”

“Stop it! Stop repeating my name like it’ll fix it.”

“Please,” he said, and it sounded so fucking sincere. So fucking sincere that I didn’t trust it at all. I shook my head.

“I told you not to do that, Kylo. I said I wasn’t her, and I’m not, and I don’t wanna be her and I especially don’t wanna be her to _ you_.” I knew as soon as I said it that I’d said it the wrong way, but I was too pissed to even care.

“You don’t? You don’t want to be my equal, don’t want me to invest in training you?” he asked, starting to get angry. Maybe even a little hurt. _ Good, _ I thought. _ Get your feelings hurt. _

“I _ don’t _ want to be your equal!” I defended. “I don’t want to rule the galaxy and oppress people with violence, not even a little bit!”

“You have wanted _ so desperately _ for me to respect you, for me to see you as my equal, from the moment we met,” he snarled. _ Oh, fuck YOU! _ “I don’t need to look into your mind to see that. You never have given a damn about rank, about order, about the system here by which you earn your keep! You didn’t want to earn anything!”

“Yeah, because I shouldn’t have to _ prove _ that I’m worthy of the fucking recycled air molecules I breathe, Kylo! Nobody should!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not fucking fair! We didn’t ask to be born, and we weren’t born to contribute to your fucking war machine, and I certainly never asked to show up here and get thrown into it!” 

“Oh, it’s not _ fair_.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “Sooo not _ fair _ for you, even though I did exactly what you wanted and gave you a chance to earn my respect without all the fucking rank and toil!” _ Excuse me, without TOIL?_

“So why did you give me that, hm? Was it because you’re as afraid of me as you are of her? Is it because you saw your chance to get yourself a nice shiny new Rey--”

“_You’re _ the one who threw it in my face that she rejected me from the beginning!” he spat. _ Shit. _ I knew he was right, and that felt like a big nasty twist in my gut that actually got my attention. One half of me was full of sour pride, wanting to keep shouting and arguing and maybe blow something up, who knows. The other half had been to a lot of therapy. I was keenly aware of how I’d done my best to take advantage of Matt’s lack of knowledge about Rey, to avoid the possibility of running into her, to keep Kylo away from her. Because she was the biggest threat to what I had now, which was the only way I could think of to try and figure out how to get home. To keep Kylo from someone who was, whether I liked it or not, tied up with him. Because he was a fucking movie character, in a fictional universe, and their two Plots were woven together and yet here I was treating them like they were real people. 

But he _ was _ real to me, now. This whole world was so real, so vivid, so goddamn visceral and confusing and astonishing and terrible and _ oh my God. Oh my God. Am I getting absorbed into the canon? Is that why I’m forgetting home? _

It woulda been funny, if it hadn’t been so fucking real. I stood totally still, feeling sick to my stomach. _ What the fuck else am I supposed to do? Should I stop learning about the Force? What the fuck else am I gonna do to try and find a way out? Fly a spaceship into a fucking wormhole? _ Nothing that involved releasing more control than the little I already had seemed even remotely acceptable. Yet I felt so guilty for these tiny manipulations, how much they’d built up already. _ I just don’t wanna be that shitty person. Not at home in my real life, and not here. Not ever again. I wish I could right now, though. Uuuugh. _

“You’re right,” I said finally. “You’re right. I did.” I felt ashamed. I couldn’t help but see my own bullshit for what it really was in that moment, and I hated it sooooooo much. Old habits die very, very hard. “I shouldn’t have.” 

Kylo was looking at me with one of those strange expressions. Like he was still so mad, but he was also other things, and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to deal with the other things because he was only good at being mad. He said nothing, but the gears were turning in there. I felt like a fucking idiot, and an asshole, and a loser to boot. I wanted him to reply so desperately that I just started talking again.

“I’m sorry I can’t be her. I’m not gonna live up to your expectations. I can’t--”

“Aeon,” he said, and his voice was as strange as the look on his face. “I don’t want you to be Rey. I don’t.” I looked into his eyes, and they were equal parts serious and sad. For a moment I was worried he’d let someone else in the pilot’s seat, but they weren’t Ben’s eyes. Or Matt’s. They were Kylo’s eyes. 

“No?” I asked quietly. He shook his head stiffly. It was almost like being this sincere actually pained him. I felt like I wanted to cry, which was a feeling that I fought with every fiber of my being. “I, um. You’ll find her.”

“What?” He knit his brow, puzzled.

“I had another seizure yesterday, but there was a vision too. You’ll find Rey. I don’t know what’ll happen, or how it’ll end. But I know you’ll have your reckoning.” I really hadn’t wanted to tell him about that vision. But it was becoming abundantly clear that I needed to be honest, and be who I was, just like Matt had said. Kylo was staring at me.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I didn't recognize the place at all. There were remains of a ship I think, and a whole helluva lotta ocean waves, but that’s all I saw.” I felt sad, like I was losing something. Some dumb fuckin’ security blanket I’d made up around being the new Rey, getting so Big And Strong that I could nope myself outta this universe and back into my own. Maybe I could, but I just… didn’t wanna do it on false pretenses, I guess. Kylo drew a long, slow breath, looking into the distance for a second before he looked back at me. 

“I’ve seen that place, too. In my dreams. I wonder where it is,” he mused.

“You’ll find out soon enough, I reckon,” I sighed. Being myself was exhausting, and made me feel small. I missed Matt, but asking Kylo if he could switch out seemed like a dick move. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. It’s slightly astonishing, to be honest, how many of our arguments hadn’t ended in flames, broken equipment, or my untimely demise. Suddenly my waster was flying off the ground and over to its wall mount, and so was his._ I guess we’re done for the day. _

“Same time tomorrow?” I asked him, and my voice sounded hollow.

“Yes. I’ll see you then,” he said very briefly, and turned and walked out. Something about how clipped his exit was actually stung, for some reason. _ Why does he get to just march off and not deal with shit, ever? Why do I keep expecting him to make me feel better, again? Need to cut that shit out. _ I took a huge breath in, and let it out as slowly as possible. 

I was definitely messaging Matt as soon as I got back to my room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the sexual tension between these two is so thick you could cut it with a lightsaber.........


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mitaka is the new gay best friend.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Matt hadn’t gotten back to me by late evening. I was laying on my bed, flipping through reports and documents and the info library on my datapad like it was a fuckin’ Instagram feed, only way less satisfying. I just wanted to talk to a friend.

_ Wait a minute. I HAVE a friend. I think, anyhow. _ I started tapping out a message.

**Hey, Duffy. You free to hang a little tonight? I’ve had a shitty day**, I sent to Mitaka. He actually answered within moments.

**Hi ducky. I’m free, do you want to come down for a drink?** I smiled.

**No, I’d rather hang in my room. Really don’t need people listening in.**

**Ah, I understand. Give me a few moments and I’ll head your way. **

**Okay cool.** I sighed. I had not counted on Mitaka of all people to be the closest thing I had to a new gay bestie, but I was extremely grateful in that moment. A little while later, my doorbell rang. 

“Hello, ducky,” he greeted me with his little smile when he came in. “Having a tough day, are we? You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“Nah, it’s okay. I make incredibly poor choices when I get shwasted,” I explained to him with a chuckle. 

“Clearly you are wise beyond your years.” He walked over to the couch with me and we sat down. He was wearing soft back pants similar to mine, and a white t-shirt. I missed the suspenders on him, they were kinda iconic. Maybe I just like suspenders, honestly. I decided I should totally try and get some of my own.

“Thanks, it’s the trauma,” I joked flatly. He gave a cynical little snort.

“Isn’t it always. You want to divulge what happened, ducky? Was it your technician?” he asked, lounging on the couch with his elbow up on the back of it.

“Kinda, but today specifically it was Kylo,” I confessed, rolling my eyes. “I can usually handle his brand of bullshit. But today I actually think it was my own brand of bullshit that got me.”

“Oh dear. Much worse, when it gets you like that, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was… I dunno what people say about me, but I just wanna go home. But I got no fuckin’ clue how I got here. Getting trained by him felt like my only choice. He’s still sooo caught up with Rey, though.”

“Who?” he looked confused. 

“The girl from Jakku, the one he’s been chasing?” 

“Who killed Snoke? Goodness. I suppose he wants revenge, though technically she did give him a promotion, of sorts.” _ Oh, if only you knew. _

“Yeah, ‘cept I think he actually just wants to get her to join the dark side or some shit. I really think he has a huge crush on her.” Fuck it. Mitaka was officially privy to my meta-knowledge-informed thoughts. If he betrayed me later, so be it. He raised his eyebrows at me.

“You think so? Well… now that I think about it, it almost makes sense. When everyone else is afraid of you. But you’re a bit famous for giving him lip, too, you know,” he chuckled. _ Say what? _

“Really?” I asked, brow furrowed.

“People walking by the training hall can hear you two shouting, you know. I think some of the troopers are hedging bets on when he finally murders you with that saber of his.” Something about that made me actually laugh.

“Can I place a bet against myself, then?” Now we were both laughing. “I just don’t deal with assholes well.” 

“Or you have a deathwish, ducky. But the fact that he hasn’t yet indicates something, I suppose.” He seemed to be pondering this for a moment. “So he’s hung up on the Jakku girl, eh?”

“One way or another, not that he’s gonna tell me which of course,” I murmured. “I feel like a substitute for her. In a bad way.”

“Has he got a crush on you too, then? Rumors aside, in all honestly that would terrify me, to be the subject of his… ardor.” He grimaced, like it made him nervous just thinking about it. Like he could fathom exactly the kind of obsessive, desperate, and terrible admirer Kylo was.

“I don’t fuckin’ know. I doubt it, is the thing. I think if he does, it’s just bleed-over from her. Which I do _ not _ like.” I grumbled. Totally not jealous, remember? Why be jealous of that shit, anyway? When I could just figure out how to talk to Matt? “He’s acting weird, sometimes, though. Like maybe in a good way but mostly in an uncomfortable-to-just-bad way.” _ Like that entire flight back from Kaller. _ I’ll be real with y’all, in retrospect, I was totally just in denial that I desperately wanted to know if he thought he was nuzzling me that morning, or if he thought he was nuzzling Rey. Not that I wanted to _ do _ anything about it, necessarily, because the idea of being nuzzled by him was anxiety-inducing. Getting aggressively fucked from behind would’ve been one thing, but actual affection from Kylo Ren? Noooooooo.

“They act strange when they don’t know how to deal with their feelings, don’t they?” he sighed heavily. 

“You know what I mean, doncha?” I asked him, smiling knowingly. He rolled his eyes.

“Do I ever. I’ve got one even as we speak, just towing me along like he’s got a bloody tractor beam. I should know better than to expect honesty from the men on this damn ship, but they’re my only option. Can’t very well live on planetside trysts alone.” He shrugged.

“I’m sorry, Duff. At least there’s a bajillion people on this boat.” 

“Long as I’ve been in this army, ducky, it’s starting to feel like there aren’t that many. But, it’s quite alright. I’ve survived worse.” He glanced out my window ruefully. “I’m sorry the Supreme Leader is such a mess, but it’s good you’re not pining, yourself.” I felt a pang of guilt-- or self-loathing, maybe-- when he said that. “What about the technician? Have you confessed your love yet?” His smile got playful again. I groaned.

“I tried, but I totally chickened out. I’m _ so _ nervous about this one, Duffy.”

“You poor thing. What happened?”

“Well…” I tried to sort out the shareable details from the super-top-secret ones. “I told him I _ like_-liked him. You know, with the emphasis ‘n all that. But he didn’t seem to get it at all! And I just bullshitted my way out of explaining. But then he was weirdly snuggly after that. Platonically, of course. He’s an awkward one, so it was really cute, but I’m so fuckin’ confused. I’m not an alien, right? People here know what it means when someone says they _ like _ you, don’t they?” 

“I mean, usually,” Mitaka replied, brow knitting. “Emphasis is the key I suppose. Do you think he’s playing dumb for some reason?” I frowned.

“God I hope not. I don’t know! Wouldn’t that mean he didn’t like me back?” I really didn’t like that notion, even a little.

“Not necessarily, ducky. He might be just as nervous as you, I mean you did say he was an awkward one. Perhaps it’s just been awhile for him,” he suggested. “Or maybe he doesn’t think it’s a good idea because you’re the Supreme Leader’s apprentice?” _ Christ. He really could just be scared shitless that Kylo wouldn’t be into it. Even though Kylo literally just said he wouldn’t get in the way and was kinda rude about not feeling the same way, too. Which was extremely unnecessary. _

“Well, alright, I guess that didn’t occur to me. I forget the effect Kylo has on people,” I replied, rubbing my forehead. “Man, that sucks. I hope that’s not true, ‘cuz then I’m getting fuckin’ cock-blocked by Kylo and I can’t even get mad at him for it.” The lieutenant laughed. 

“You could probably have a good roll in the bantha hay with someone low enough in the ranks, ducky, but I could see how a sustained relationship with Ren’s pupil might be anxiety-inducing,” he commented. 

“Yeah, I bet it’s like knowing someone has a scary dad at home with a shotgun he’s ready to point at his kid’s new boyfriend, if he decides he doesn’t like ‘em,” I mused. “‘Cept Kylo is like, the opposite of dad material. More like a creepy other boyfriend who I’m not even dating, which just makes it much weirder.” 

“Precisely. Or perhaps he believes the rumors about you, or something like that. Who knows, unless you get him talking.” He raised an eyebrow at me pointedly.

“I know, I know. I get it.” I rolled my eyes, then looked back at him curiously. “So what _ are _ all the rumors about me, anyhow? Other than my apparent sexual relationship with Kylo, or the looming potential of my death because I’m pathologically disobedient?”

“Oh, the rumors abound, ducky. Some of them are quite ridiculous,” he replied with his high little chuckle. “My favorite thus far has been that you’re from another dimension, and appeared here to alter the course of the future. For good or ill, depending on who you ask.” 

I stared just a little. _ Um, that’s a little… disturbingly… accurate? Except for altering the future, I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to do that when I don’t know what the future is, even. _

“Wow, and I thought _ I _ was crazy. Totally off the wall,” I murmured. “What else?”

“Let’s see, there’s the usual boring ones about you being a spy, of course. I’m sure we know where those came from,” he said, rolling his eyes. “One is that you’re a Jedi, possibly returned from the grave. Another, that you’re actually someone from Ren’s past, some old flame or another. Or someone from Hux’s past, since he tried to do away with you so hastily and in such ill-advised fashion. They all say you’re mad, of course, but then again they say something similar about Ren himself.” He shrugged. “I believe there are some legends where using the Force causes a madness, or perhaps the other way ‘round, who knows.”

“Huh,” I murmured. That was a lot of weird shit, but I was considering playing into some of it later if I needed to. Mostly to scare off nosy people. “How is Hux, by the way? He never calls, he never writes.” I smirked.

“Oh, he’s quite put out. _ Very _ ill-tempered, and rather reclusive, and a terrible subordinate. He’s so used to being in charge,” Mitaka said, and his half-grin was sardonic as hell and I felt deeply comforted by it. Because fuck that guy. “He’s been strange, though. A little too withdrawn, I feel like. I know shame can do that to a person, but he’s so very melodramatic.”

“Interesting.” _ And ominous_, I thought. Maybe I just felt extra paranoid, given our history, but I didn’t like thinking about Hux skulking around being devious and weird. I didn’t like thinking about Hux at all, because every time I did I remembered what he said about Kylo not letting me go. To say nothing of the literal torture. But I was starting to wonder. “Duffy, can you do me a favor?”

“Depends on the favor, but what?”

“Can you maybe keep a lowkey eye on Hux for me? I don’t trust him, for reasons I won’t get into. More than just what he did to me, though.”

“Oh,” he replied, seeming surprised. “You want me to tell you if I notice anything untoward?” God he was so British-sounding, even though there was no Britain in Star Wars. Just inexplicable British accents.

“Yeah, you don’t have to go out of your way or get in trouble or anything. But I’d appreciate it.” 

“Sure, ducky. I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.” It was a little bit of relief, I realized, to have someone other than Kylo/Matt looking out for me. Though, Lucky did snoop that one time when Hux barged into the medical bay to try and scare me off. Maybe the droid was lowkey looking out, too.

“I’ve got to run off, though. It’s nearly past my bedtime,” he said, and eased himself up off the couch. “You let me know if you need anything, and I’ll certainly let you know if I notice anything.” I smiled.

“Yeah, thanks for that. And for coming by to chat. I really needed to get that shit off my chest.” 

“I know the feeling. You have a good night, ducky.”

“You too, Duffy.” And he left, throwing me a little farewell wave before the door slid shut. I sat there for a moment, brain on tumble-dry with all the thoughts our conversation stirred up. Then I plucked my guitar up from its leaning-spot to strum a little, and remembered most of what I tried to play. Which made me feel a bit better, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay had to drop this lil chapter after the holiday pandemonium! i love this friendship y'all, like someone has to check Aeon on their shit xD 
> 
> more Matt fluff is on the way...


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it's back in the closet for me, I guess.

The following evening, since Matt still hadn’t gotten back to me, I decided to wander down the to technical levels for a walk. It was after-hours, and pretty quiet, and not my room. I was gettin’ real tired of my room, but still not sure I wanted to go wandering the social environments of the ship by myself. I took my datapad with me, of course. 

I really still hadn’t processed what the fuck was going on. I hadn’t been jumping straight into using the Force for a minute, because it either didn’t work or did something I didn’t want it to. My lesson with Kylo that day had been uneventful, though he was kinda grumpy so I told him right off the bat I wanted to keep it simple, because my brain hurt. So I learned a new routine to practice, and went through the old one several times before that, and he didn’t guide me this time. Which was great, because I didn’t want him to touch me. Well, most of me didn’t want him to. The part that did was in a serious time-out.

But walking down the halls in the technical levels was strangely soothing, now that I knew that no matter how lost I got I could use my map to get back out. I used to take a lot of long drives, back home. I was forgetting some of the places I’d go, but I remembered the road rolling by under my wheels, and how free it made me feel. Here wasn’t quite the same feeling, but I was in a pleasant haze of passive investigation, looking at all the terminals along the way and peeking into random rooms that were full of what I guessed were generators or something.

As I rounded a corner, though, I stopped dead in my tracks. Just down the hall, barely twenty feet away from me, someone in a gray technician’s jumpsuit was laying on the floor, head inside an open panel with some kind of tool in hand. _ Someone must be working late. _ I decided spontaneously to scurry past them as though I had somewhere to be.

Just as I was about to sigh a sigh of relief that they didn’t see me, of course, I heard a shuffle and a soft ‘ow’.

“Aeon?” _ Fuck. Is that-- _

“Matt?” I asked, turning around. Sure enough, a shaggy blonde head was now propped up, looking at me from behind big glasses. There was a smudge of some kind of engine grease on his cheek, which was _ so _ cute.

“Hey!” he replied, smiling. “What are you doing down here?” 

“Why didn’t you answer my message?” I asked, frowning. I was kinda offended that he was out in the pilot’s seat and not talking to me, which was stupid and unfair to him, but. 

“I’m sorry, hun. I was going to, but I’ve, uh, had a lot on my mind. I needed to focus on something simple, clear my head.” He sat up, rubbing his temple, and slid the tool in his hand back into his pocket. _ Well, I can’t be an asshole about that. He doesn’t get the chance to do much. _

“Oh,” I murmured, feeling guilty but still kinda bummed and also deeply, painfully curious about what was on his mind, exactly. “I know the feeling. That’s why I’m here, too. ‘Cept I’m not being useful, I’m just wandering.” He chuckled at me, and leaned over to pick up the panel he’d removed from the wall and stick it back in place. 

“That’s funny, that we came to the same place,” he said. “Do you wanna walk back together?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” I murmured.

“It’s okay, I just finished.” He stood up to his full, glorious height. “C’mon, we’ll head to your room or somethin’, if you want.”

“Um, okay,” I agreed, and fell in beside him. He was being his usual sweet self, which was one part incredibly soothing and one part frustrating. Like, were we gonna talk about what happened in the shuttle on Kaller? Or was he just gonna pretend nothing happened?

“You’re wearing that shirt from the market!” he remarked, smiling even wider. “That looks really nice on you.” I felt my face flush, and looked down to realize that I was, in fact, wearing one of my new things. I’d been way too deep in my head to pay attention to that earlier today.

“Aw, thanks.” _ Yes. Compliment accepted. Point one for me. _ “Did Kylo like the boots you got?” As soon as I mentioned Kylo, Matt’s face fell a little.

“Um, yeah. He did.” He looked away from me awkwardly for a moment. _ Oh, come on, _ I thought. _ Please can we just TALK about it? Please do NOT make me start it. I am so fuckin’ bad at that. _

“He complimented the necklace, too,” I told him. Then, I realized something. “You know, that morning on the shuttle?” I raised an eyebrow at him. _ Ha! There. I started it. Point two for me. _

“Um, yeah, about that,” said Matt awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. “I didn’t expect that. He’s usually the one who wakes up, but I thought he wouldn’t since I didn’t, yanno. Switch out or anything. And he was so out, all day, when normally he at least lurks around. It’s hard to explain.” 

“It’s okay.” Honestly, I was just relieved as hell he was trying to explain. I might not ‘get’ how the switching works sometimes, but just knowing what was vaguely happening was great. “I mean, it was _ suuuper _ awkward,” I added, giggling. “But he tried not to be TOO weird, bless his heart.”

“Did he?” replied Matt nervously. 

“He did. He failed miserably, but he tried, and I appreciated it to be honest.” Now he was giggling a little, too. I smiled at him. “Thank you. For taking me out planetside. That was definitely the most fun I’ve had since I got here.”

“Sure, anytime,” he beamed back at me, blushing a little. Yeah I was never gonna be able to stay mad at Matt, ever. “I’m glad you had fun.”

“Maybe we can do it again, sometime?” _ Please? _

“Maybe,” he murmured. “I’d like that.”

“Me too.” For a moment we did that cute awkward silence thing we were so good at, but then Matt suddenly stopped walking. I halted a couple of steps ahead of him, confused. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s coming down the hall,” he whispered. “I don’t think we should be seen, do you?” He looked very worried, so then I got worried too. 

“Shit,” I whispered back, retreating back to his side. “What do we do?”

“Back here, there’s a tool closet, c’mon.” He turned around and backtracked to an intersection of two hallways we’d just passed, and there was in fact a door in the wall. A small door. Which he opened, and revealed a really fuckin’ small closet with a mess of tools hung on all the walls. “Duck in here for a minute. Quick!” he hissed, waving his free hand anxiously. I shuffled in fast, spurred by a mounting slap of adrenaline, and tucked myself into the corner of the closet. 

I fully expected him to just shut the door and play it cool like he really did work down here, since clearly sometimes he did come fix things. So when he slid into the closet beside me and gently shut the door, my eyes flew open in surprise. It was so close in there that my nose was pressed into his chest, my arms suddenly stiff at my sides. It was totally dark, too. _ Shit, it’s like seven minutes in heaven, but way worse. _ I could hear us both breathing a little heavy from the excitement, could even feel his breath on my head. He smelled incredible, the same way he’d smelled in the shuttle. My eyes might’ve rolled back into my head a little bit, from that smell. 

He gave the softest little shh, and then I heard the boots of whoever it was coming closer. Actually, it sounded like two people, talking to each other through some kind of machine. _ Bucketheads, _ I thought. _ From the nearest guard station, probably. _ I waited to hear their boots pass by, my heart pounding, taking slow, deep breaths of that fucking amazing smell, more focused on listening to him breathe than anything else. I just barely nuzzled my nose into his chest. Just a little!!

Their voices were loud now. I waiting for them to start to taper off into the distance, but they fuckin’ didn’t. They stopped in the crossway, chatting. 

“Oh, they won’t change that thing. We already tried, the whole battalion. Fuckin’ asshole wants us ready for battle at any time, I guess,” one complained.

“Well, I can’t blame him. Those Resistance fighters been giving us the slip over and over. Doesn’t mean we should be waiting around about the home base changes though, I think. But you know how it goes,” the other replied. I was only half listening, but I knew they were probably talking shit about Kylo. Matt’s head turned, and I tried to look up at him but there was no reason to because I couldn’t see jack shit. His feet shifted almost inaudibly, his breath still coming in even.

“This new kid’s got him acting like a real moof-milker, though,” said the first trooper. “Just makes no sense, taking on an apprentice outta nowhere like that. They gotta be fuckin’.” I felt my face flush. _ Damn, here come those rumors Mitaka was talking about. _

“Everybody says that,” groaned his companion. “You think he’s the one fuckin’, or the one gettin’ fucked?” They snickered. _ Holy shit, are they debating which one of us is the bottom?? _

“Kylo’s gettin’ it, hands down. Mebbe like nobody else ever gave it to ‘em. Gotta be a reason he hasn’t cut that kid in half yet.” Now I was bright red, and grateful for the total darkness. But I was kinda smirking, too. Because they thought Kylo was the bottom, and that was _ hilarious _.

“Midge just tagged a bet that he would in the next month, though. Maybe we should start taking bets on who’s givin’ and who’s gettin’,” suggested one of the troopers. _ HAH. _ I barely suppressed a laugh. 

“I’m gonna bring it up after shift. How we gonna find out, though?”

“Gotta play the long game, buddy. It’ll become clear one day.” They laughed again.

“Alright, I’m headed to the lower level. See ya ‘round. 

“Have a good shift, man.”

“You too.” 

Finally, their footsteps parted in two different directions and slowly started to fade. I let out a slightly deeper breath where I’d trapped my laughter. Matt sighed.

“That was close,” he whispered.

“You think we can go now?” I asked.

“Probably,” he replied.

“Then why are we whispering?” He snorted.

“Fair enough,” he murmured, and his low voice was so close to my ear I almost jumped. I found myself trying to look around again, even though it was _ completely _ dark. 

“Where’s the door button?” I started feeling around beside me, only to slap my hand into something that felt like his arm. My heart fluttered when I touched it. His hand gripped my arm back, as if to stop us flailing into each other.

“Oops, not there,” he chuckled. He released my arm and went back to feeling around, or trying to. “Shit. Can I feel behind you on the wall for a sec?”

“Uh, sure,” I muttered, and he wrapped one arm around me and pressed me gently but firmly into his chest while one arm started to feel along the wall of tools for a button. _ Ohmigod. _It’s like I’d never fuckin’ touched him before, or something. Or maybe just every time was so loaded with unresolved romantic tension that only got WORSE… Suddenly he slipped, and was leaning onto me with his hand on the wall as I heard a tool clatter to the floor. My face was scrunched into his neck as he slumped over me, and I let out a startled gasp, followed by a giggle.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, almost into my ear, the sound of his low voice sending a thrill all the way from my head to my toes. Could he not hear my heart racing? Could he maybe be suddenly emboldened by the pitch darkness, perhaps? Could I be emboldened by it? 

“It’s okay,” I said. Then, at the same moment, he turned his head down and towards me and I lifted my head up and towards him, because we were still habitually trying to look around despite it being a totally futile effort. My cheek brushed against his chin as we did, and then I could tell by the soft breeze of his breath on my face that we actually would have been looking at each other, had there been even a little light. My heart almost pounded its way outside of my body and left me behind to figure my shit out, to be honest. I had no idea how close we were, but it had to be so fucking close. 

“We need a new plan,” he murmured. _ Oh fuck oh God he is SO close, I can almost feel his lips moving. This is your chance on a silver platter you fucking moron! Literally could not be any easier! What are you afraid of? _

But we all know what I was afraid of. Rejection. For reasons not yet communicated, maybe the reasons Mitaka and I had wondered about. Maybe some other reason I had no way of guessing. Whatever it was that kept Matt from saying something, from doing something, from even talking about it… if it meant I’d have to get this close only to be rejected… _ Fuck. This sucks. I am such a fucking baby. _

“Yeah,” I breathed, my lower lip trembling. Was this divine providence, trying to smash our two faces together? Or were the Star Wars gods gonna be just as cruel about this one as they were about everything else that had happened here? We were breathing in time with each other, for fuck’s sake. Heavily. I wanted to just go ahead and drop dead on the spot. This was officially way, way worse than any other situation so far.

He pushed himself off the wall, and even though our bodies were still pressed together his face was no longer that close. One of his hands started to reach out behind him, feeling along the wall there. I felt my heart start to sink. With a sudden, violent burst of light, the door flew open. Immediately I stumbled out of the tiny space, the air in the hall nice and cool and refreshing. I blinked, and rubbed my eyes. 

“Wow. It was right there the whole damn time,” Matt said as he stepped out of the closet and shut the door behind him. He also rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. “I’m such a bolt-head.” I almost laughed, but I wanted to cry a little too because of how much I hated myself for being so scared to be rejected. Time to divert with a joke!

“You know, I think we should move in. It’s got a great bedroom suite.” I raised my eyebrows at Matt, and he laughed. “Not an ideal location, but I mean. For the price.”

“You’re so silly,” he giggled, smiling at me. His face was very flushed, as I imagine mine also was. God I adored him so entirely. I vowed to myself at that moment that the next time I saw him, or I would message him on the goddamn datapad if I had to, I WAS gonna find out once and for all if we could make out or not. Just not, you know, right then. But next time! “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” I assured him, sighing. “Just hope we don’t have to do it again before we get outta this maze.” I offered a half-hearted chuckle. I was trying, dammit, but I felt like the biggest fool in the galaxy. We started walking again, Matt guiding me towards the exit. We managed to be quiet for a while and it wasn’t awkward, probably because I was lost in my own thoughts. When we finally arrived at the exit, I sighed. I didn’t know if I wanted him to come to my room or not, after all that. It was only gonna prolong my apparent inability to just use my fuckin’ words. Which was gonna prolong my feeling like an idiot. 

“You okay?” he asked me as we stepped through the doors. He seemed concerned.

“Yeah. I’m okay,” I said, though I doubt it was convincing. “I just got so tired all of a sudden. Lessons have been more physical lately, with the saber training and everything.” 

“Oh, I bet. You want me to walk you home? It’s pretty much on my way.”

“Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that.” And so we started walking again, still silent, still ruminating. Maybe I was gonna have to message him, after all. If that was the only way to say the words that needed to be said, then fuck it. Plus then, if I got rejected and ended up crying, I wouldn’t feel like an asshole for it. Nobody had to see.

“Aeon,” came his voice, and I stopped walking only to realize that I’d walked right past my own door. Matt stood there, looking at me with an increasingly worried expression. “Hun, you sure you’re alright? You seem kinda out of it.”

“I’m okay, I promise. I’m sorry for acting weird. I’m just worn totally out.” I opened the door to my room, and stepped through it. Turning around to put my hand on the control, I looked up at him. His face was sad. 

“I hope you get some rest, then,” he said, quietly. _ Oh my GOD WHAT IS WRONG? Please don’t be sad, Matt! No. Stop. He’s allowed to be sad. You’re also sad. Just go chill and compose your message. This is gonna go belly-up if you try this right now. Trust me. _ I gave him a little smile, but it was sincere.

“Thank you, Matt. You too. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll answer your ping next time, I promise,” he assured me. My smile got a smidge bigger.

“Okay. Goodnight,” I said softly to him, waving my hand as the door slid shut.

“G’night,” he replied, just before the door closed.

I stood there for a moment, frowning at my door. _ I hate this. I hate feeling like I don’t know what to do, or like it’ll hurt too much. I can’t even remember the last time I acted like this. _ I sighed and turned to sit on the couch, and picked up my guitar to strum again. In the middle of singing “Unchained Melody,” though, I finally started to think about what I should say. Putting the instrument aside, I pulled out my datapad and started a new blank document and began to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aeon is DONE WITH THEIR OWN BULLSHIT, Y'ALL, i'm tellin ya. there comes a time when it's past time to get your shit together, and you can only live with your own cowardice for so long. yanno?
> 
> had to have some fun with a slow burn trope here. it was too much to resist :3


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I become a real Jedi, or whatever.

I was so bummed out about my failure with Matt that I honestly forgot to be stressed about my next lesson with Kylo. I’d rewritten that message I’d started about four times, and I knew that once I got out of Sith-ergarten for the day I’d probably go right back for the fifth. All my confidence from earlier was gone-- I wasn’t thinking it at the time, but I know I was probably feeling kinda weird about the whole Rey problem, too. I fully expected more swinging a wooden sword around, grouchy comments from Kylo, maybe more of a special flavor of aloofness after his big fuckup. 

I did _ not _ expect him to call me to the meditation room and present me with a bunch of what looked an awful lot like lightsaber parts. Guess what happened?

“Wait, already?” I asked him as he held out the box to me. “My crystal hasn’t even picked a color yet!” 

“Don’t worry, it will take a little while to build. I want to be sure and train you properly, for whatever weapon you choose,” he replied, face very sober. He seemed sincere but very businesslike, not grouchy, which made no fucking sense to me. _ I wonder if he’s just avoiding combat because of what’s been happening? _

“Um. Okay.” I took the box from him, sifting through the parts casually like I knew what literally any of them were for. “I’m just making a regular one, right?”

“That’s up to you. Do you want a ‘regular one’?” He raised an eyebrow at me, as though he’d expected more, somehow. That just made me self-conscious. _ Wow, now that I’m your prodigy or whatever, I can’t just be like… scooching by on the bare minimum? Even though I’m suuuper fuckin’ emotionally compromised? _ I should’ve been feeling elated, even grandiose, about getting a light saber. Two days ago I would’ve been. But today, I felt like agitation was starting to bleed into all the places where recent bullshit had left holes in my confidence.

“I haven’t really been thinkin’ ‘bout it, to be honest. Didn’t you get your design from your crystal getting cracked? The whole cross-guard thing…” _ Caused a pretty big wave among the fans, _ I thought. I admit, I started out as a skeptic, but after watching the movie the cross-guard kinda made a lot of sense. Kylo’s face looked strained, like he hated it every time I knew something about his past he hadn’t already told me. _ Tough titty, Supreme Dickhead. I know what I know. _

“Yes.” He looked at me for a moment. “But there are many varieties of Force weapons. You could build whatever you wanted.” 

“I… sorta wanna learn the basics first?” I was feeling limp as hell that day. No bright ideas, no manic sense of purpose or inspiration. Nothing as impressive as that one session ended up being. I glanced out the window at the planet we were in orbit over, which was full of yellow and orange clouds of unbreathable gasses. “Is the Force gonna let me know what kind I should build, or something?” 

“You make that choice yourself. The Force may guide your steps, but you have to take responsibility for the direction you choose.” I wondered if he spotted the deep level of irony in his statement. Probably not. I wasn’t feeling spunky enough to point it out to him. Not yet, anyway. “I can help you, though.” Now I looked back at him, ever so slightly suspicious. Nevermind that he was my teacher, and that was exactly what he was supposed to do. 

“Okay… how, exactly?” 

“Sit,” he instructed, so I took a seat on one of the pillows. He followed suit, facing me. I put the box of parts in between us on the floor, and looked back at him doubtfully. “You don’t have to know what every part of the saber does right now. What’s more important is how you fight, and how you plan to _ use _ it.” 

“So like, self-defense? Form 3?” I asked. I knew Form 3 was all about deflecting blaster shots, pretty much. I couldn’t think of any other reason for me to use a light saber, as the only two people I was aware of who also had them were him and Rey. And I didn’t want to actually end up dueling either of them. 

“Sure,” he agreed, although he seemed a little exasperated. He let out a huff. “The third form is a given, I’ll teach you that regardless. But beyond that, Aeon? What you do anticipate? What do you know about yourself, as a fighter?” 

Was he kidding?

“Nothing,” I said flatly. “I told you, I’m not trained in anything. I know jack shit about fighting, dude.”

“I don’t just mean combat. How do you approach disputes with other people? Or intervene with confrontation not directed at you?” I frowned.

“My therapist says I avoid confrontation. I don’t like it much but I reckon she’s right.” 

“Why don’t you like it?”

“Because... I hate running away. I hate feeling like I can’t defend myself.” Yet again, Lessons with Kylo was starting to feel like therapy. But with a therapist who probably wanted me to get really, really mad. 

“So what do you do when you _ have _ to defend yourself against someone?” He was looking at me intently, which was always a mixed bag. I stared back at him for a moment. 

** _You want to hurt them,_ ** came a voice in my ear. It wasn’t Kylo’s. I froze, horrified. Why were the voices back??? ** _You want to stop the fight before it starts, just like you told him before. Did you tell him why? You know you’re a cruel person. That’s why you want so desperately to be good._ ** I swallowed nervously. 

“Throw pillows at them, obviously,” I murmured, trying to joke even as the voices hissed at me. Kylo narrowed his eyes.

“Answer me, Aeon,” he said, his voice growing an edge. ** _You want to defend yourself, but since you can’t, you want to make sure there’s nothing to defend against. Eliminate threats. By whatever means necessary, even if they’re terrible means. And you love feeling able to do that. You love being cruel. It feels strong. You are wicked, and you still feel weak when you can’t be that. Because you _ ** **are** ** _ weak. _ **

“On Earth, there’s a lot of different kinds of martial arts,” I started slowly, bullying past the voices as best I could. “There’s one called aikido, from Japan, that focuses on a kinda spiritual and physical harmony, I guess. It’s meant for self-defense, and it emphasizes protecting your attacker from injury as well.” Kylo’s eyebrow was raised again, but he was listening curiously. “There’s another one called hapkido, from Korea. It’s almost like aikido’s evil twin. It focuses on controlling your opponent, and finding the quickest possible way to take them down. To…” I gulped. I hate quoting the voices. But this time, they were right. “To end the fight before it starts, no matter how cruel you have to be. That’s my gut instinct. I’ve been spending a lotta time trying to get better at the aikido approach, though.” 

For a moment, he just eyed me. The edge of anger seemed to leave his face, at least. 

“Interesting,” was all he said. _ For real, dude? I just confessed some gnarly shit to you, and that’s all you have to say? That’s sooo helpful, thank you. _ “Do you want to know what I saw?” Now, I was paying attention.

“What did you see?” I wondered if I really wanted to know.

“Can I show you?” he asked, and he slipped his glove off one hand. Then he held it out to me, palm displayed. I was soooo not fucking sure about that. ** _Did he see the truth about you? Will he? And will he exploit it? Will you let him?_ **

“You’re not gonna read my thoughts are you?”

“No, I’m going to let you see mine.” _ Oh. Well, fuck. _ That almost made me MORE nervous. Everything about Kylo was making me nervous, today. Like, not only was I not even about to let go of the latent fear that he might cut me in half if I pissed him off enough, but now I was plagued by how simultaneously sexy and hot/cold he was. A combination that was at least one of my various brands of kryptonite, back in the day. But I reached out, my fingers shaky, and pressed my palm against his. _ I guess it’s time to find out what he really thinks of me, maybe. _

I was back in the training hall, only I was looking at... myself. Which was gonna make me feel very fucking dissociated later, I had a feeling. I hadn’t looked at myself much since arriving here. Then, I was sparring with myself, and I realized I was in a memory of our lesson from just the other day when things got… weird. But I was reacting as Kylo, seeing the whole thing through his eyes.

The dance of it was beautiful, at first. I felt such a profound presence of the Force, like it was flowing quick and powerfully through me. Something about it was almost a relief, like the movement was rare, a break from its usual overwhelming presence. I couldn’t hear the thoughts of Matt or Ben, or sense any kind of presence from them at all. I realized belatedly that the flow of power wasn’t just moving through me as Kylo-- it was running _between_ Kylo-me and the me that I was watching. Like a loop, a circuit that we both fed and consumed hungrily.

_ Up the stakes, _ Kylo thought. Or, I thought. God it was weird being someone else in their own memory. _ See if the response is good. _ Then, our dance switched from harmony to contest. I thought I was remembering that feeling of my core growing warm from my own memory, the feeling of my cheeks flushing and my heartbeat picking up. Then, I realized it was Kylo’s memory of that same feeling. _ Yes! This is incredible. The Force seems to be the guide… Oh, you can do better than this. So much energy and power! You say you can’t fight, but the Force is with you. _ And then other-me was smirking, looking at me through their eyebrows, but I saw a familiar knit of concentration there too. Like I was watching myself get really fucking focused, really fucking intent. I was responding to other-me’s attacks the same way I remembered responding to Kylo’s, just barely quick enough, even though I was clearly holding back and just seeing what I would have to react to. _ That’s cute. You’re getting cocky… _ But I felt very strongly that I _ liked _ watching other-me get cocky. I liked the spark, the interplay, the struggle between us for power. It felt new, exhilarating, and something about how much other-me seemed to be enjoying it too… I wanted to impress other-me. I wanted to give a little, stoke the flames, then subdue other-me just enough to make them in awe, make them appreciate what I could teach, what I could offer them, make them _ want _ it...

Suddenly I was sitting back in the meditation room, and Kylo’s hand was curling away from mine. I blinked, and shook my head trying to re-absorb into my own perspective. He looked at me, his expression gone sober again. I glanced at my crystal, which was glowing purple. 

“You _ engage _ with your opponent, Aeon. Beyond just crossing blades with them. It’s not always like this, between those who use the Force. Usually it’s a battle to see who's walls can be broken down first. But you don’t want to invade others, you want them to _ show _ themselves,” he was saying. I was mostly listening, but part of me was realizing a few things about the memory I’d just seen. Experienced. Whatever.

“Um,” I replied, my brain going several directions at once. _ Did he really want to impress me, that day? _ I blinked some more. “What does that mean?”

“It means you would make a duelist unlike any other left alive,” he said. I side-eyed him hard. I was not feeling grandiose, today. This compliment seemed highly suspect. “You use the other person’s energy as much as your own. There used to be duelists like that, years ago, in the Old Republic and before it.” 

“There are only two people with lightsabers left alive,” I pointed out. 

“Yes, and while I could’ve overwhelmed you with my own skills, I sensed something different from you. You sought out the connection between us, our similarities. You weren’t reacting only out of self-defense, and you didn’t want to just end the fight until the very end. For a minute there I think you were enjoying it.” 

“So were you,” I rebutted, crossing my arms. 

“I haven’t in a long time,” he said, and there was another ghost of a grin on his face. This one was super faint, but I could see it.

“How is this helpful, though, Kylo? I don’t plan on dueling anyone,” I reminded him. 

“This flow of the Force between you and your opponent can affect your use of the saber at any time,” he explained. “You could use it in blaster combat, any kind of prolonged confrontation. You already use it interpersonally.” 

“What?” I asked, defensive. _ I do not! _ It sounded way too much like he was accusing me of being manipulative. And I’d already gotten enough of that shit from him last time. 

“You do it to me all the time,” he pointed out flatly. Okay, that was true. 

“Yeah well, I have to fight with you. You’re… you.” 

“But that time you actually liked it. That changed everything about the combat. If you had the training I’ve had...” He shook his head. I silently thanked the universe that I didn’t have that training. “Mace Windu designed the Vapaad form for that exact thing!”

“What about when I didn’t like it?” I prodded. He’d pulled out of the little Vulcan mind-meld before we got to that part. The part where I got aggro. Where I wanted to win too much. He frowned.

“That’s just because you wanted to prove something to me--”

“Did I?” Of course I did, why else would I want to win? But fuck him, for pointing that out.

“Aeon, you’re enough like me. I know what you wanted.” 

_ What the fuck? Did he just say I’m LIKE him? _I felt myself getting angry, and flustered.

“Right before that _ you _ wanted to prove something to _ me_!” I retorted, no longer squeamish about using his memory against him. _ You didn’t break the connection before I felt THAT, you fucker! _ “Do you just wanna make me into your little prodigy, Kylo? Are you sure you care about who I am at all, or is this about you?”

“Who you are has everything to do with what I’m teaching you!” he replied, his voice starting to get louder.

“Who I _ was_,” I spat back. “Not who I was trying to be. Not who I want to be. I want to be better than I was. How can you teach me that?”

“I can’t.” I looked at him, slightly shocked. He was surprising me more and more as time went by. The writers really hadn’t done him any justice at all, at least not in complex relationships. And this shitshow was getting pretty fucking complex. “I can’t teach you that. I can teach you how to use what you have. But you do have a darkness, Aeon, and it will make you powerful if you want it to.”

“And if it corrupts me?” I asked him, my voice going quiet, my heart turning sour with the fears I continually didn’t acknowledge because they were that terrifying. “What then? Who am I gonna be when I go back home?”

“I don’t know. But you have a home here, now, if you want it.” I blinked. _A home here?_ I felt the deep, guttural pang of wishing I could remember my dad’s face. Or my childhood dog’s name. Or the other half of my mom’s favorite song. “You don’t have to be lost, if we never find out how to get you back.”

“I have to get back.” I was increasingly full of horror at what he was saying, and starting to panic. Was Hux right? Was he just planning to keep me here? _ Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. No. Fuck you! _ “I can’t…. I can’t stay here, Kylo, I can’t.”

“Okay, then we’ll keep looking,” Kylo replied immediately, tone businesslike. _ What? _

“You’re… you’ll let me go?” _ Why do I not believe you? _

“Yes.” He was looking at me resolutely. Like he’d learned something, in the last movie, perhaps? About letting people go? _ Hah. Doubt it. _ “Trust me.” I did not trust him.

“We’ll see,” I murmured. I was so stressed out in that moment that I heard my tone slip into something angry, defensive. I ran my hand through the light saber parts, unable to keep eye contact for that moment. I couldn’t just _ trust _ Kylo Ren. That’s not how anything works. Right? I glanced back at him, frowning.

“Can you at least pretend to respect me, then?” he growled, like he was starting to get angry again, too. Like me not warming up to his enthusiasm about my potential, or trusting him at all, actually... upset him. That just made me mad. How dare he try to be a decent person at a time like this, anyway? 

“I guess I can do my fucking best,” I growled back, throwing some little metal thing I’d picked up back into the tray with unnecessary force. “But you have to earn my respect too, just like I have to earn yours.”

“I am the Supreme Leader of the First Order!” Then he actually stood up, looking down at me with his fists clenched. He was officially Pissed. “I don’t have to _ earn _ anything else.”

“I don’t give a shit about the First Order!” I stood up immediately, though that did very little to alleviate the sense that he was much, much taller than me. My cheeks were burning, I was soooo fucking tired of the rank system bullshit. So very tired of being put in my place, when I didn’t sign up to be there. “I just give a shit about _ you _, Kylo. About how you treat me, and everyone else. So far you basically just bully people, and that’s not fuckin’ respectable!”

“I oughta make you clean my goddamn floors or something, you have _ no _ discipline at all. Which is the worst possible trait for an apprentice,” He was looming over me now, but I puffed up closer in response, my heart starting to pound in my chest and my ears. “Or I could put you in an escape pod, let you die on some outer-rim shithole, or try and crawl back to me if you think you can. How’s that for bullying?”

“You’re being childish now, it’s not a good look,” I spat. “I thought you might be growing past that bullshit. God, how did Matt end up being so sweet while you ended up being like this?”

“Matt didn’t keep us alive!” he shouted, and I knew I’d REALLY made him angry. I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but I had officially engaged in enjoying fighting with him. Otherwise why would I have gone for the jugular like that? Comparing Kylo to Matt when there obviously was no comparison? When clearly alters are each their own person, and there was no reason they should have been similar? “Matt couldn’t tolerate Snoke’s training, couldn’t face Luke betraying us, couldn’t protect us and that’s why _ I’m _ here. Because he was WEAK!”

“Don’t you get it? That’s exactly what I’m trying to fuckin’ say to you! Just being powerful isn't all that makes you strong, and kindness isn’t weak! Cruelty, defensiveness, that shit’s weak!” _ Oho, does he want to talk to ME about what weakness is? The guy who smashes holes in his own ship instead of going to therapy? _Nevermind that I had started out this fight being defensive, and was now progressing into being cruel. He looked straight into my eyes and started walking towards me slowly, even though there were only two feet between us. I took a step backwards without realizing it. “You can’t just Force-choke everyone to get what you want and expect me to respect you!”

“But you love being cruel, don’t you, little one?” he said, and his tone had fallen much quieter, and MUCH more ominous, and I felt a pang of something rise up in my core. I should have been terrified. I’m not good at being scared when I really, really should be, I’m sure y’all noticed. It made me fucking furious when he called me that. And I was even more furious that it always… turned me on. I shivered. _ God I hate you. _

“Not as much a you love being strong, breaking everything, fucking forcing everyone to submit,” I snarled. I had to take another step back because he was still coming towards me. “You can’t _ make _ me submit to you, Kylo. You’ll have to kill me first.” Another step back, and I bumped into the cold glass wall, the gas giant spinning behind me. _ Shit. _

“I don’t have to make you,” he growled, his dark eyes absolutely predatory. _ Shit shit shit shit shit. _ “You want to. I know you do.” 

This caused two equal and opposite reactions in me: I wanted to slap him, because he deserved it for trying that you-know-you-want-it shit with me like I’d never heard it before. I also wanted him to stop being right. _ Fuck I wish you were an acceptable candidate for a nice sound fucking, I really do, but you are such a shithead. Uuuugh. I would give anything to be stuck in a closet with Matt right now. Instead I’m here getting riled up by THIS asshole. _

“What makes you think that?” I hissed up at him. “You inside my head now? Breaking our agreement?”

“Because that’s why you want me to earn your respect, isn’t it?” He bent his head down towards me a little. His smirk was _ completely _ insufferable. “If I earn your respect, I’ve earned your submission.” 

To be honest, I hated him more than fucking anything in that moment. For being exactly fucking right. I had no idea if he understood just how overtly sexual those feelings were, of course. I clenched my thighs together, trying to contain the desire that was blossoming there. 

“I think you’re just saying that to piss me off,” I said, and for the second time in two days I was inches away from that face. This time it was Kylo’s, though, and my heart was racing with how much I didn’t want to do the thing I was feeling so deeply, viscerally compelled to do.

“You think so, little one?” he purred. _Oh, God._ His voice was so deep and so close that it sent shivers down my spine. 

“Yes, and that’s not how you earn anyone’s respect.” I don't know how my voice stayed so steady.

“How do I earn your respect, then?” _ Hatefuck me right now against this window? SHUT UP BRAIN. STOP IT. Plus that’s bullshit anyway, you won’t respect either him or yourself after that. BUT GOD. THIS IS THE WORST. _ I felt like I was back in college, when certain unhealthy coping mechanisms were pretty much my way of life. Almost involuntarily, my head moved just a little closer to his, and I managed to tug it back before it was too late.

“Respect me first, asshole. Ask me, before you choke me.” At the time I thought that was a pretty funny little jab, but I’m starting to think it was more of an epic Freudian slip. For a moment, I swear to God I felt a hand wrapping around my neck, not squeezing but running its thumb over the front of my throat like it really, _really_ wanted to. That did NOT help the situation with my lamentable state of scarousal AT ALL. Goosebumps formed all over my chest and arms. But Kylo’s hands were still balled into fists at his side?? His nostrils flared, like he wasn’t sure what to say. Or like he was about to explode. I wasn’t sure which. I kept eye contact with him belligerently, though. I was more than ready to chuck him at the glass wall again, if the temptation to kiss him got too strong. _ Come at me, bro. _

But he was stepping away from me, backing off, standing up straight. Getting out of my face. Which was the respectful thing to do, tragically. Despite being pressed up against the cold window, my whole body was flushed and hot.

Then, in typical Kylo fashion, he turned without another word and marched out. 

“Jesus Christ,” I swore at the empty room. “Fuck you, Kylo Ren, fuck you and every single self-destructive instinct you pull right outta me like I’m fucking 18 years old all over again!” I turned and kicked the window behind me, to absolutely no avail. Putting my hands up on the glass, I breathed hard for a minute. Looking at the planets outside usually made me feel better. But at that moment, my relationships with Kylo and Matt felt like they were both on the edge of a precipice. My crystal was still glowing, purple light bouncing off the window back at me, but it was dim. I glanced back at the tray of parts behind me. I wanted to throw them everywhere, but instead I tried to just lift them with the Force. Just to see.

Nothing happened. The focal point of my anger was gone.

“God_ dammit_!” I slammed my hands against the glass, furious and scared. When I felt agitated and depressed like this, the Force seemed to come only in those huge bursts of anger. One of which I had only narrowly avoided just now. Confusion and lust and intense frustration, no dice. _ Fuck this. _

I left the box of parts on the floor, and marched out of the room myself, rattled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo, lordy. these two are a mess. a hot mess. aaaaand i love it tbh. <3


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out they have karaoke in space!

I was definitely moping in my room, staring at the message I’d rewritten to send to Matt about ten times by then, basically throwing myself a little pity party (guest list: 1) when I got a surprise message from Mitaka.

**I heard Ren stormed out of the meditation room earlier today. Are you alright, ducky?** I know, right? What an incredibly nice thing to do. 

**Yeah, I’m okay. I’m mad as hell at him, but that’s not new.**

**Of course. Would you like to join me for a nice refreshing beverage about it?** I smiled. I wouldn't have assumed he was such a barfly, to be honest. Being as I desperately wanted to leave my room, though, I thought about it. _ As long as I don’t get drunk, I’m pretty sure I’m fine. _

**Okay. You down at the Cockpit?**

**Where else?** I could almost picture the dry little grin on his face.

**Let me get dressed and I’ll be down there in a bit.** I jumped off my bed and started rifling through the clothes in my closet, trying to pick out something cute. Why brood about Darth Tantrum And His Upsettingly Shy Alter when I could just go out with my new gay best friend and look cute? And maybe meet someone else on the ship to mope about later, yanno? I went full butch and decided to wear the vest as a shirt. Always a good look. I went for my new boots too, because why not? 

Then I was scuttling off to the little bar, which was busier tonight than it had been the last time I was there. Mitaka was at the bar, drinking something that looked for all the world like a tequila sunrise. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted me, and gave a prissy little wave of his fingers and a smile as I approached.

“Hi ducky,” he said, patting the stool next to him. “Care for anything?”

“Oh, just a fizzpop is fine,” I assured him as I sat. He gave me a look.

“You know, part of Ren’s problem is, he doesn’t cut loose enough. He takes everything much too seriously. You wouldn’t want to fall into the same trap, now, would you?” I rolled my eyes at him. _ Yeah, but you’re not bipolar, and neither is Kylo, _ I thought. 

“If I cut too loose, the whole thing flies off without me.”

“Cut just a little loose, then,” the Lieutenant recommended. “Just take the edge off. No need to get rowdy, of course.” He waved the bartender over. The bartender that night, I have to add, was a _ beautiful _ redheaded woman.

“Somethin’ for your friend, Duffy?” she asked, throwing a disarming smile at me.

“What do you prefer?” he asked me. _ Shit, I have no idea, _ I thought. _ What the fuck do they drink in space?_

“Uh, surprise me,” I said, smiling back at the redhead. I knew there was no way I was as charming as her, and I was a little too mopey still to jump into outright flirtation. But God, I wanted to. “Only, don’t make it too sweet.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t like it too sweet either,” she assured me with a wink, before turning around to select her ingredients. I blinked after her, smile still floating on my face.

“She has that effect on people,” Mitaka commented, clearly suppressing a giggle at my expense. 

“I bet,” I sighed. “What’s her name?”

“Ask her yourself! You’ve got to cut your teeth on something, ducky. You’re practically a hermit. What with all you deal with every day, you need more friends. No, you _ deserve _ more friends.” He nodded sagely at me, sipping his orange and red drink. “Did he lose his temper again today?”

“He always loses his temper,” I growled. “He wakes up, his temper’s already lost.”

“You sure you don’t always give him something to lose it over?” he replied, giving me a sly grin. I groaned.

“Please stop callin’ me out, right now, Duffy. I just got here.”

“I knew it. The way you spoke to Phasma? I knew you had to be giving Ren a hard time. To his face, no less. You’re the bravest person on board.”

“Or the most fuckin’ stupid person,” I posited. That felt more true, at the moment.

“Aren’t they mistaken for the same thing often enough?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. “Anyway. You need an outlet for all your... frustration. It’s only natural.” I wasn’t sure if he was saying this because he meant it, or for the benefit of the bartender who was walking back over towards us with a drink in her hand. Her jumpsuit was unzipped enough from the top to give her just a suggestion of cleavage. _ Was it like that before? _

“Here y’go, boss,” she said to me, sliding the glass over. It was full of a faintly glowing, translucent white liquid over a few cubes of ice and with some kind of fruit cut in a spiral over the top. It looked… well. Like a drink in space should look, to be honest. Way too fucking cool to make sense. I picked it up and sniffed it. It smelled like vanilla and sage, and the faint cut of ethanol. “Tell me what ya think?” she added, looking at me with an expression that was either a pout or a challenge and I didn’t know which. Her boldness was starting to activate the part of my brain that just loooooooves it some chemical mood boosters. I held the glass up and held my eye contact with her as I brought it to my mouth and took a sip.

“It’s delicious,” I told her, smirking a little. She gave a self-satisfied little smile, and leaned over onto the bar with her arms crossed. This afforded me a hell of a view, and I wondered distantly if she did this to all her patrons or if it was just me. Nice as the view was, I was more drawn to her eyes. They were pale green, and heavy-lidded, and not afraid to match my eye contact at all.

“There’s more waitin’ back here, soon as you want it,” she purred, and I couldn’t help but lift an eyebrow at her as she stood up again and walked over to greet another customer. 

“Ooh, ducky, I think she likes you,” Mitaka giggled.

“I think I like her, but it’s just a guess,” I replied. “I’ll know once she stops puttin’ me on, and we start talkin’ for real.” 

“You really do take things too seriously,” he chided me.

“I like it when people actually try a little for me, yanno?” _ Like how Kylo has to try and like, I dunno, treat me like a person instead of a machine he can bully into working? Matt doesn’t have to try, though. He’s already perfect. _

“Would that I were so choosy,” the man lamented, sighing. 

“You still lettin’ that one guy string you out?”

“Tragically, yes. But I may lose my patience sooner than he expects.”

“I’d cut ‘em off, if I were you. Greener pastures.”

“We’ll see,” he muttered. “Have you talked to your little technician crush yet?”

“No,” I said flatly. Duffy looked at me reproachfully. “I’m tryna write out what to say, though. I can’t just blurt it all out. Every time I try, my throat closes up.” I thought about that pitch-dark closet with Matt, and shivered just a little. I still felt like such a fuckin’ idiot about it.

“Well, that’s a good step, at least,” he encouraged me. “But you just told me to cut someone off who wouldn’t be forthright with me. How long are you going to let him do the same?” Now he raised an eyebrow at me. I frowned.

“It’s part my fault for not being upfront about it,” I pointed out. “And being so dead on my feet lately. I’m so tired, and worn out from Kylo’s bullshit.”

“Fair enough, but still. You are so bottled up you might explode,” he teased me, glancing back at the bartender. “I saw you just now, the way you looked at her. You almost gave _ me _ the shivers!”

“Are there any outlets you can recommend other than recklessly casual sex, Duffy?” I asked him, despite the fact that I was smirking. At the bartender. Who was eyeing me from the other end of the bar. 

“Well, it’s karaoke night,” he mused. My head whipped back over to him.

“Seriously?” _ Oh, you’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. They have karaoke in space?_

“Oh yes, I’m afraid so!” He seemed delighted. “Do you sing, then?”

“I…” About a million thoughts ran through my head. Not the least of which was _ Do I even know any songs that someone would sing for karaoke in Star Wars? _

“Don’t be shy!” 

“I can sing, yes,” I muttered, reluctantly. I saw his eyes begin to sparkle with mischief. “But I doubt I know any of the songs, so I’m useless in this scenario.”

“Bollocks! Everyone’s bad at karaoke, no need to be like that!” 

“You don’t understand, man. I do not know y’alls music. I am from a speck of nowhere that’s far, far away.” _ Ohoho, _ my brain said. _ You did the thing, you said the line, from the movie. _ Yes, if you’re wondering, sometimes I do get really annoyed at my own brain.

“You can give lip to the Supreme Leader, but you can’t sing onstage at a bar?” Now he was looking at me very judgmentally. 

“I can, I just can’t sing along with songs I don’t fuckin’ know, Duff. I have an instrument and everything, okay?” I regretted saying this immediately. But I was officially talking before I was thinking, and I was only halfway into my drink.

“You do? Would you play it, then?” he asked me, too brightly.

“Is it as much fun for me to play something nobody knows, though?”

“Oh come on. Just the one song, ducky. People pick up funny little ditties from planetside all the time, you don’t have to sing something everybody knows.” He was looking at me very earnestly now. “Pleeease! I’ll do a karaoke song too. To show solidarity!” I groaned. 

“Dammit. Why you gonna make me do this?”

“Because it’s FUN, you shuttle bum!” 

“I gotta go all the way back to my room and get my guitar, though.”

“Nono, you’re not getting away that easy. I’m going with you,” he declared, and promptly sucked down what remained of his drink just like that. I looked at the ceiling.

“Lord, what a fuckin’ idiot I am,” I lamented, and swallowed the rest of my drink, too. And off we went.

When we arrived back at the Cockpit from my quarters, it was… packed. Not just troopers, but uniforms of all kinds and people in off-duty clothes. 

“Is it always this busy on karaoke night?” I asked the Lieutenant, starting to feel a little nervous. I hadn’t been on a stage playing for a crowd of even semi-reasonable size for years. 

“Better than usual, tonight!” he replied, seeming pleased. He dragged me back to the bar. Just then, of course, someone started to announce the ‘event’. If you can even call bar karaoke an ‘event’.

“Just two quickies, love!” Mitaka shouted over the noise to the redhead. She nodded and winked, and then she pulled out-- you guessed it-- two shot glasses, and poured them both full of clear blue stuff. 

_ Oh no, _ said an increasingly smaller part of my brain. _ Not that… _

“Here ya go!” she hollered over the din, and pushed them towards us. Mitaka took them and handed one to me. I shrugged. _ Fuck it. One shot, one song. No harm done, right? _ We knocked back the liquor. 

“I’ll go put us on the list, ducky,” he told me, and as he scurried away the first song began. Whatever it was, the person singing it… let me not be rude. They lacked professional training, or even amateurish practice. Standard karaoke fare, really.

“You want another one, for the jitters?” the redhead asked me, grinning. She’d already poured it, of course, and was holding it out to me. _ God, her eyes are somethin’ else. And her lips. And her hair… _

“Thanks, darlin’,” I smiled at her, and knocked back the second shot. It always starts like this. Every time. She smiled at me as I handed her back the little glass. 

“Whatcha gonna sing me?” she asked, very flirtatiously. 

“Oh, just a song nobody’s ever heard,” I replied, shrugging. “Duffy won’t let me get outta here if I don’t.” 

“Am I gonna like it?” Her eyes were locked with mine again. My face was flushing, but probably from the alcohol.

“I sure hope so.” I hoped I looked as much like a smirking cantina scoundrel as I felt in that moment. I had not expected to meet a hot girl who was at least ostensibly into me, tonight. My brain dove right into the distraction from my Supreme Troubles. Her smile quirked, like she wasn’t expecting that response but liked it anyway, then she looked up at the stage. My eyes followed hers, and there was Mitaka with the little microphone, already rosy-cheeked and beaming. I tossed a wink back at the bartender, who I think might actually have blushed, before I sidled along through the tables to get closer to the stage. 

I don’t know what song he started singing. No idea. But hot damn, y’all. Turns out Mitaka is a _ beautiful _ tenor. That little man had a voice like an angel. I was downright impressed. Also, I think he was a popular fixture at the bar karaoke night, because people were listening to him raptly and whooping and cheering through the whole song. I clapped, too, obviously. Then, at the end of his song, came the part I’d almost forgotten to dread.

“I’d like to introduce my friend Aeon, who’s agreed to play a little song for us tonight, before we carry on squawking like mynochs!” he said, and waved at me vigorously. A wave of noise rippled through the crowd, mostly cheers I think, but there was some ooooh-ing like people were surprised, or curious. I stepped up onto the little stage, and Mitaka put the mic back on its stand as I adjusted my instrument with its strap across my shoulder. When he was done, he scuttled over to the edge and waved encouragingly at me. I raised an eyebrow at him, and leaned towards the mic.

“Hi,” I said, experimentally but also awkwardly. It hit me, right at that moment, that I’d better pick a song I’d learned recently-- or else I might’ve forgotten half of it. _ Shit. _ There was a little murmur through the crowd, which actually did look like a crowd at that point. Like, there were people standing at the door who couldn’t comfortably squeeze into a seat yet. 

“Play somethin’, baby!” came a whoop from somewhere in the back. It was almost like being back in the band. Yes, I was in a band once. Briefly. For like a year. It’s not a big deal.

“Oh, I’m gonna,” I assured the source of the voice, and that got a couple laughs. I looked down at the fretboard, and tried to think of a song that wasn’t grossly plaintive. Something… yanno, upbeat. _ Oh yeah. I know one. _

Maybe it was the double shot I’d just taken, but my fingers started in on the chords and the song just came flowing outta me like I’d played it a zillion times. Which, to be fair, I kinda had, but. No shaky hands or anything. No thoughts about whether I’d forget it or not. No sudden stops where it turned out I had forgotten. Just a shit-kickin’ jam, man.

“_I been down with a broken heart since the day I learned to speak, _

_ The devil gave me a crooked start when he gave me crooked feet, _

_ But Gabriel done came to me and kissed me in my sleep, _

_ And I’ll be singin’ like an angel until I’m six feet deep_,” I started, and there was a startled, rapt silence. But I wasn’t bothered, which might have been the two (2) shots at work. I started stomping in time, just like you’re supposed to for that song (it’s Brandi Carlile, look her up), and did not once look up from my fretboard. _ Do NOT look at the audience. _

Then with the next verse, and the stomping, and my strumming getting way more aggressive, people started to whoop. Shouts of encouragement and enjoyment and even excitement, and was someone clapping in time with my beat? I belted out the chorus, because you really can’t half-ass that song, and then people were actually cheering. All the dopamine I’d been without the last couple days came flooding back into my brain. I finished out the song, and the whole bar was hollering and clapping and someone whistled. I finally hazarded a look, and there were lots of smiles and drunk faces laughing and enjoying themselves and honestly? It was a bigger success than most of the band’s shows had been, if you consider the size of the audience. I felt myself turn a little red, even beyond whatever the alcohol had done, and waved back at them.

“Another one!” came a shout from the back somewhere, and then Mitaka was shuffling onto the stage and almost jumping with excitement.

“Another?” he asked me, and I gave him a look, and shook my head. _ No way, dude. _ There was a chorus of _ awwwww, _ which made me laugh, so I leaned over to the mic. 

“Hey, I gotta keep y’all wantin’ more, right?” I asked coyly, and my question was answered with more cheering. “Next time, then…” And then I slunk off the stage with the Lieutenant, flushed and a little exhilarated but also relieved to not be up there anymore. 

“That was fantastic!” Mitaka squeaked as we arrived back at the bar. “You have such a lovely voice, ducky! I’d no idea!”

“Speak for yourself! Your voice is amazing!” I retorted. 

“Oh, that’s kind of you,” he replied, turning a little pink. “I’ve never done much with it.”

“Okay but I can tell you’re a regular here, and I think they like you.” I grinned at him, and he waved me off.

“Oh pish tush. I’m thirsty!” he deflected, and the redhead was already over on our side of the bar with two more shots in hand. 

“That was amazing!” she shouted over the sound of the next karaoke contestant who’d started in on some very bawdy space shanty, or something. She handed us the shots, this time of a red liquid. “You really got a voice on you,” she added to me. I felt reluctant to accept the shot, like the drowning Voice of Reason in my head started wailing plaintively _ Please stop taking shots you really should stop taking shots pleeeease… _ but it was too late. My hand was already out, the shot was already in it, she was already grinning at me.

“Thank you kindly,” I replied, grinning back, and Mitaka and I knocked back our shots almost in unison. “We should start a band, Duffy.”

“Oh my,” he murmured. “Wouldn’t that be a sight? I don’t know…”

“Who’s shy now?” I asked him, trying to tease. But he was turned away from me, and when his face turned back around it was pale.

“Don’t look now, but there’s a certain recently demoted General over by the door,” he hissed into my ear, and I felt my blood turn to ice despite the liquor. But my heartbeat remained steady as I slowly handed the shot glass back to the bartender, who looked confused. 

“Would you be so kind as to bring me a glass of water, darlin’?” I asked her, smiling sweetly. She took the shot glass out of my hand, letting her fingers wrap lightly around mine in the process. 

“Sure thing,” she nodded, smiling despite her confusion at Mitaka’s change in demeanor. 

“Now you can look,” he said quietly to me, leaning slightly in the other direction. I turned casually, eyes flitting up to the stage first, then around to the crowd which I could’ve sworn had thinned significantly since I’d been up there. Sure enough, there was Hux, leaning back against the wall by the door with the usual snarl on his face. He was slightly in the shadows, but I could tell it was him. Moments after I spotted him, he turned and exited the bar. I couldn’t tell if he knew I’d seen him or not. _ Goddammit. _

“That’s not gonna go well for him,” I assured Mitaka. He nodded at me, and sighed. “Kylo ordered me to report pretty much any time he gets even remotely close to me or tries to contact me in any way to him. Directly.”

“Did he? How protective of him.” The bartender was walking back over, and sliding him another drink before she slid the water I’d asked for over to me. 

“Mm,” I replied, turning my attention to the redhead I’d much rather be talking to or about. My ears were getting warmer, the flush of alcohol was coming back since Hux had departed. “What’s your name?” I asked the bartender finally, leaning over the bar to get closer to her.

“EV-6941, but you can call me Evie,” she replied into my ear as she leaned over.

“That’s a lovely name,” I purred, our heads remaining in close proximity so we could hear each other over the din of yet another drunk karaoke singer. “I’m Aeon.”

“I know who you are,” she replied, turning her head enough to look me in the eyes with her green ones. Something about that was unsettling, her knowing who I was already. “Most people do. Why you think it got so crowded in here, just now?” _Oof. Not better._

“Oh, I reckon they wanted to see the Supreme Leader’s monkey do a trick,” I frowned, pulling away from her. 

“It’s not like that,” she reassured me quickly. “People are just… curious.” I eyed her, because the way she said that word sounded awfully interested, to me. Mitaka leaned over to me.

“My sweetheart’s gonna come by in a bit, ducky, but I’ll be here,” he told me, and I saw that he was looking down at his datapad at a message history. _ Uh oh, _ I thought. _ I hope it’s not time for Mitaka to get white-girl wasted and cry about this shitty boy he’s been trying to see. _ I nodded to him, then looked back at Evie.

“Curious, huh? What do they wanna know?” I asked her, and I tried to make it sound like a dare. 

“Oh, just… what you’re like.” She was smiling mischievously.

“They wanna know if I’m fucking Kylo Ren, don’t they?” 

“They’d wanna know if you were fucking anybody,” she pointed out. “But especially the Supreme Leader.”

“Thanks for not bullshittin’ me ‘bout that. I know some of the rumors, anyhow.” I smirked at her, taking a drink of water. Ah yes, the responsible thing to do when you haven’t been drinking almost at all for four years and you just downed one drink and three shots in a forty-minute timeframe. Drink water. That’ll fix ya right up.

“You gonna clear any of them up?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“I might.” My smirk got broader. “Though I will say, I am not sleeping with the Supreme Leader. Which is too bad for him. He could do with a nice sound fucking.” This made her giggle.

“I think a lotta people around here could.” The look on her face cleared up any doubt I might’ve had left about her interest in me. What it didn’t clear up, though, was if I was actually interested in her. I mean, obviously I was interested in her. But I was struggling to decide what to do about that, because I was trying not to be impulsive. Trying.

“I’ve noticed,” I replied, running a finger around the rim of my glass rather methodically as I looked her over. I was flushed, and _ very _ confident, and totally struggling with making the right choice again. It was starting to feel like the logical reasoning ship had sailed, though. Especially when she bit her lip a little at me. _ She has the cutest cupid’s bow… _

“You wanna hang out till my shift’s over?” she asked, leaning forward onto the bar on her elbows again. 

“When’s that?” 

“Zero-hundred hours.” _Oh, midnight._ I glanced at the clock on the wall behind her, which said 2330. “Not long,” she added, as if to clarify.

“Sure,” I said, and leaned towards her on the bar. I put my mouth right by her ear. “I look forward to it.” I felt her shiver a little, and that surge of excitement you get when you know you’re gonna totally get laid washed over me. She giggled just a little.

“Me too,” she murmured into my ear. I grinned, and as she pulled back away from my face I tried to throw her a smoldering look of some kind. I might’ve done it, too, except for the expression on her face when it came back into view. She was staring behind me, and she looked surprised, even scared, as she opened her mouth to stammer something. “Sir—”

“Apprentice,” came a voice that instantly sent waves of bubbling irritation over me. _ Shit goddammit fuck. Are you kidding me? _I took a huge swig of my water to almost finish it, then turned around on my stool. Mitaka was beside me still, but he’d gone stiff as though he’d only just heard the voice himself. Sure enough, there was fuckin’ Kylo towering behind me, his hands behind his back. He was glowering as much as he ever did.

“Yes, sir?” I asked him, my elbow on the bar still. I was way too buzzed to keep my cool, and somewhere in my head I knew that, and I also knew that it didn’t matter because here he fucking was, after all. 

“It is unwise for you to be drinking.” _ Oho, you think I don’t know that? _

“Don’t I get off-duty hours?” I asked him, frowning.

“No. You are always my apprentice, and should conduct yourself as such.” I started to realize just how quiet the bar had gotten. As though everyone but me was staring at him with the same paralyzed fear that Evie had been. I glared back at him.

“So it’s not cool for me to have like, thiiiis much fun?” I asked him, holding up my hand to indicate a tiny little space between my thumb and forefinger. “All I did was sing for karaoke night—”

“Apprentice. You will accompany me out of this bar, _ right now _,” he cut me off, and his voice had a special edge to it. Not the usual angry one he saved for our lessons, though. I was still getting pissed at him, but that tone he’d used was so strange, so almost-desperate, that it kinda freaked me out.

“Fine,” I growled, and slid off my barstool. “But you don’t get to give Duffy shit for havin’ fun with me. He was tryna help.” 

“_Now_,” he repeated expressionlessly, and turned as though waiting for me to fall in beside him. So, I did. The silence inside the bar was unbelievably awkward. I felt like a kid whose teacher had come to punish them by making them sit alone in the classroom during lunch, or something. I filed out with him as he marched on his long legs, my eyes passing over the empty place where Hux had just been as we crossed the threshold. It was late, so the hallways weren’t overcrowded, but it took me all of five minutes of walking to accidentally careen into Kylo a little. 

“Shit—”

“You are drunk,” he growled at me.

“Geez, big guy, simmer down,” I advised him, holding up a hand and swerving back away from him. “I’m not drunk, I’m just tispy. _ Tip _sy.” Goofing up your words is not exactly a reassuring way to convince someone you’re not drunk. 

“It makes you vulnerable, Aeon! You aren’t safe like this!” His voice was starting to get louder.

“I’m not safe like any whicha-way!” I retorted. “Even if—”

“If I have to lock you up in your room, so help me—”

“HELL no!” I shouted, totally unconcerned with who heard. Pretty sure all the people in the hallways just scurried away, though, if they did hear. “Fuck you, you can’t just—”

“I can do whatever I want! And what I want is to keep you out of danger!” He wasn’t quite shouting yet, but he’d stopped walking and his fists were balled up at his sides. 

“Stop treating me like I’m a fuckin’ child!” 

“How can I when you conduct yourself like this?” 

“Like what? Like a person who doesn’t wanna just meditate and swing a sword and feel like shit all day?” My face was extra flushed from the liquor as I started to get truly pissed off. “You can’t fuckin’ put me in a cage and expect me to learn anything! The sadder I get, the worse I do with the Force! Haven’t you noticed that? I totally noticed that!” 

“If you die, it’ll hardly matter!”

“I don’t plan on dying anytime soon!” 

“Nobody does,” he hissed. “Can you protect yourself, Aeon? Can you prove to me I can let you do whatever you want on this ship and it won’t blow up in my face?”

“Was THIS not enough LAST TIME?” I shouted furiously. I waved my hand at him very drunkenly, and he went flying backwards into the hard metal wall. I froze, shocked. I really hadn’t thought about that at all before I did it, and frankly I’m still surprised it actually worked. “Fuck! Shit!” I clamped a hand over my mouth. Kylo was on the floor, pushing himself up as he caught his breath. I guess Force bitch-slapping him into the wall had knocked the wind out of him. Instead of feeling proud of myself, though, I was just feeling slightly panicked. _ Did I hurt him? Is he about to hurt me? Did anyone see that? Holy shit holy shit holy shit. _ He groaned a little, hand reaching around to his lower back which had thudded into the wall pretty hard. “Kylo, I’m sorry—”

“Enough,” he rasped, and climbed back onto his feet. He wasn’t looking at me, and his hand was still over his back.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I said. _ Enough._” Now he looked at me. I couldn’t even begin to decipher what expression was on his face, there was so much going on there. I was so surprised that I had no idea what I was feeling either, but whatever upset I felt about it was starting to fade back into just angry, confused, spooked. “Tomorrow we’ll go down to Dagoba and see what you’re really made of.” 

_ Wait, what? _

“Um, what does that—”

“And if you have a hangover, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.” He stood up straighter, taking his hand off his back and throwing me a fresh glare. “Come. I’m taking you back to your quarters.” And he started stalking off again. _ Shit shit shit what the fuck? Dagoba? Swamp-planet? What does that MEAN? _ I was too buzzed to recall much in the way of details, except that Yoda had trained Luke there. I had to drunkenly scurry behind him to keep up, and sure enough he led me back to my room. The hallways in this part of the ship were barren, at least, because all the fanciest suites were isolated for the safety of the people who lived in them.

“Kylo, please,” I murmured as he stopped in front of my door and glared at me expectantly. I let out a huge breath. “Will you just fuckin’ tell me whats going on?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” His face was opaque again. I felt my own face set into an angry scowl.

“Why’s it so hard for you to respect me, anyway?” I crossed my arms. I was still feeling the sting from earlier. “Why you gotta storm out, when I suggest something like that? Is that so fucking foreign to you? Do you just, like, hate the idea of having equals, or what?”

“Why’s it such a fucking sticking point for you, Aeon?” he asked, face breaking to become angry again. My heartbeat picked up, anticipating another sparring match. In that moment, the Voice of Reason was lost. It had fought valiantly all night, but it was tired.

“I dunno, Kylo, maybe I just don’t fuckin’ _ like _ you as much as you wish I did!” I had planned to leave him with that. I was completely, drunkenly over it. I was so tired of his rage games, like it wasn’t obvious how fucking bad he wanted me and everyone else to respect him. Like I hadn’t felt how much he wanted me to want what he had to give, when he showed me the memory of our lesson the other day. I slapped the control pad, and the door of my room slid open. Just as I made to enter it, though, his huge arm slammed out in front of me to block my path, palm on the doorframe. I stopped suddenly and clumsily, glassy eyes flashing at him.

“I don’t care how much you like me,” he growled, bending down into my face again. He stared at me, and I stared right back. Blood was rushing to my face, my ears, I could feel my pelvic floor muscles tightening. _ Oh, does he want to fight that bad? I was gonna bounce but if it’s a fight he wants… _

“Then why you so fucked up about it?” I countered, raising an eyebrow and cocking my head to the side, mocking him. I could feel a sneer working the corner of my mouth. “It’s cuz I like Matt, isn’t it? Matt and not you?”

“Matt has nothing to do with this!” he snapped, face getting even closer to mine.

“Well then what is it, huh? Go on, say it! What are you _ feeling _ right now?” I goaded him, every single nerve ending in my body feeling like it was full of lightning, ready to snap. I wanted to just wrestle him onto the ground and pin him there until he gave up, even though there was literally no way in hell I could’ve done that. He was huge. I was remembering just how huge he was very suddenly, because his entire body was starting to curl in around me, his arm blocking my path, his massive chest keeping me close to the wall, turning more and more so I couldn’t escape. I didn’t want to escape, though. I was standing up straight, hands in fists by my sides, face daring him to come any closer. His mouth moved as though he wanted to say something, but all he did was snarl in frustration. I waited for him to punch the wall and stalk away, or finally snap and do something to hurt me, or something like that. I was fully ready to retaliate. _ Please give me a reason to fight you for real, fuckboy. _

It might seem predictable to y’all, but at that point I was in fact surprised when his mouth landed on mine. Normally I was more aware of my bizarre and upsetting tendency to get both unbelievably furious and profoundly aroused when I argued with Kylo. But this time I guess I must’ve been too drunk to parse out the nuances. Until his lips were pressed harshly against mine, pushing my head back into the wall while he pried my mouth open with his tongue, of course. Then, there were no more nuances. It was so aggressive that if I’d ever wondered how soft his lips were (guilty) or how his mouth would taste (also guilty), I wasn’t actually registering either detail now. That kiss was as much a fight as anything else had been. 

When I pushed back into him, one of his gloved hands grabbed me around the back of my neck and the other grabbed my waist to hold me in place. I threaded my fingers through his hair and yanked on it, and he growled into my mouth. He pressed his groin into mine, and heat flared up inside me, and I felt my leg almost reflexively lift as though to wrap around his hips, opening myself up to make space for him to—

“No,” I murmured, yanking my mouth apart from his and going totally stiff. “No no no, nope.”

“Fuck,” he nearly gasped, almost like he hadn’t quite realized what was going on either. He stepped backwards and away from me, his hands falling away. He gave his head one fast, violent shake. “I wasn’t thinking—”

“Neither was I,” I said quickly. “We can’t do this.”

“Yeah,” he growled, scowling, fists clenched. “I know. You’re right.”

“I promise this isn’t because of Matt.” I don’t know where the urge to reassure him of this came from. Probably me simultaneously being actually into him, however inadvisably, and also being drunk. Possibly also to reassure myself. He looked at me, still scowling. “I fucked up,” I breathed, realizing that the more I thought about Matt, the more I felt like a huge asshole for what had just happened. 

“If you fucked up, I fucked up too,” he said in his low voice. 

“No,” I snapped, suddenly angry at him all over again. “You don’t get it. I fucked up. I got drunk when I knew I shouldn’t, I picked a fight with you and God I should’ve fucking known this would happen. Matt is never gonna wanna talk to me again.”

“Matt’s not like that,” he said, but his voice sounded a little bit pissed off, too. “You and I have nothing to do with you and Matt.”

“Yeah but I pretty highly doubt that Matt _ wants _ me to make out with his alter, Kylo.” I felt tears starting to sting behind my eyes. 

“How do you know that?” he challenged. My head whipped up to stare at him now. 

“Why would he be okay with that?” I asked, baffled. “Seriously?”

“Matt and I share a body. We have no choice. That can get complicated for all of our relationships.”

“You think I didn’t fucking notice that?” I asked him, snappy but also totally confused. That made no sense to me. I’d been asked to conceive of them as two different people, and I doubted that there were any handbooks on ethical polyamory in space.

“We’re different people. But he would _ have _ to have some thoughts and feelings about you, even if he never spoke to you. Because he’s my alter. With you, he gets to have his _ own _ relationship with someone for once, not just his reactions to my relationships,” Kylo explained, tone curt. I blinked. 

“Oh,” I said, trying to absorb the concept. “Wait. Was he… just now…?”

“No. He’s not active right now.”

“That’s good,” I murmured. He looked sidelong at me.

“You told him you like him, yet?” Wow. It was _ that _ obvious.

“No,” I scowled. I felt bad enough about that already. “I’ve been distracted and worried that something like _ this _ might fuck it up.”

“Don’t worry. He likes you,” he replied dryly.

“You can’t just rat him out like that!” I protested, despite turning bright pink. 

“He won’t make the move, Aeon. He’s terrified, and new at this.” _ Wait, is Kylo now helping me ask his alter on a date? WHY IS EVERYTHING HE DOES SO CONFUSING?? _

“Okay.” I was uneasy to say the least. “You… you’re not mad that I like him?” 

“No,” he replied, but his face was sullen.

“You’re not jealous?”

“No, Aeon. I’m not. I’m not jealous. It doesn’t work like that. We both have a relationship with you. It’s…” He sighed, as though lost for words and annoyed that he had to find them in the first place. “It’s complicated. But jealousy isn’t a factor. Our feelings towards you are different in nature. Fundamentally.” I eyed him. Part of me wanted to keep arguing. _ What kind of fundamental difference? Basic respect? _ But I didn’t. 

“Okay. I just didn’t want to… yanno. Be a dick.” Now he raised an eyebrow at me, like he was biting back his own snide remark. “About y’all. I know you’re different people. But this just. It’s hard to figure out. Especially when you make me so angry all the time.”

“You don’t exactly make it difficult to get angry at you either,” he snapped. 

“I was _ trying_,” I pointed out, crossing my arms. “I really was trying to be a better student. I swear. Because I know you were trying to be a better teacher for a minute there, too.”

“Thanks for noticing.” He looked at me through his eyebrows. I stuck out my tongue at him, like an adult. We were silent for a moment, just glaring at one another. 

“Let’s never speak of this again,” I suggested finally.

“Agreed. You will come to the command shuttle at 0800 hours tomorrow morning.” Oh yeah, the fucking swamp. I’d almost forgotten. I sighed.

“Fine. See ya there.” I threw up a very sarcastic peace symbol and turned to finally enter my room, shutting the door behind me without even turning around to look at him or say anything else. When it was shut, I leaned back against it for a moment, looking up at the ceiling and letting out a long-suffering sigh.

The thing I’d suffered for so long was my own bullshit, of course. I made straight for the shower, to try and forget about whatever had just happened as quickly as possible. As we all know, pretending it never happened is a GREAT way to deal with your problems, sure to be very effective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, that was a long one, but dang if it wasn't a ride all the way through!
> 
> to everyone who's keeping up with this runaway train.... thank you. y'alls comments make my day every time! <3


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I'm a swampy motherfucker.

I was silent in the shuttle down to the planet’s surface. Kylo was just as silent. It was that special kind of awkward, like when you see the Tinder date you ghosted on at a party later that week or something. My guts felt like they were tied in knots. I hadn’t talked to Matt, of course. I hadn’t even had the stones to message him after what happened the night before. I was feeling a lot less solid in my resolve to just own up to how I felt about him, regardless of Kylo’s semi-reassuring statement that he did, in fact, like me. I was looking at the message I wanted to send him, rewritten for the umpteenth time, on my datapad in the cargo hangar of the command shuttle when I felt the ship give its little lurch that meant the sub-light engines were dropping into first gear. We were about to land. Sighing, I turned the datapad’s screen off and checked my boots to be sure they were extra tight. I was not looking forward to slogging through a swamp. 

I didn’t stand until the shuttle was fully in park on whatever barely-solid slab of land we’d found. Kylo came down from the cockpit, his presence brooding and heavy.

“Don’t bring anything that will weigh you down. We won’t be here long,” he told me, expression unreadable. I just nodded. I had no idea what to say to him, to be honest. I was fresh out of snappy comebacks and everything. The memory of us snogging was blurry with alcohol, but boy oh boy was it still lingering in the front of my mind. Along with some pretty intense doubt. About pretty much everything. 

I followed him out of the shuttle, grateful that he apparently wasn’t interested in talking much either. Whatever fresh hell was down here for me, I was just gonna take it however it got served. Which was likely to be soggy and warm, apparently. As we walked, I tried to see if I could spot anything familiar from _ The Empire Strikes Back _ . But a swamp is a swamp is a swamp, turns out. There were lots of noises of wild critters, which I wasn’t crazy about. As we walked a little further, I started to feel strangely tense. Not oh-God-why-did-I-make-out-with-Kylo tense, though. Something different, that made my teeth clench. The crystal around my neck was glowing more brightly than usual, its color shifting unpredictably. _ Am I going to the same cave that Luke went to? God I hope not. _

“The cave that was once here is gone now, but the power of the Force remains,” Kylo said suddenly as we drew into a patch of swamp that looked just like the rest of the damn swamp, to me. _ Well, shit. _ I raised an eyebrow at him.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“I destroyed it, when my old master brought me here.” His expression was still unreadable, but I could feel the way Kylo’s energy shifted when he brought up Snoke. He so rarely used his name, for example. I looked out ahead of us, and sure enough there was an area that looked like it had been wrecked at some point. Overgrowth had started to reclaim it, and there was a canopy of vines forming where the roof of the cave had once been, but the uneven ground and displaced soil and rocks gave it away. The tense feeling in my jaw was worsening.

“That bad, huh?” I murmured, vaguely remembering something about this from a Star Wars comic book I hadn’t paid enough attention to. _ I bet he saw his parents, when Snoke brought him here. That’s fuckin’ rough. _ Kylo stopped and turned to me.

“The cave is gone, but the principle remains the same. You continue walking forward, and the Force will show you what you must see.” 

“What’s my goal, exactly?”

“To overcome.” _ Oh, look who decided to go all poetic and vague on me NOW, of all times! _

“You sure I’m ready for this?” I asked him nervously. _ Because I’m pretty sure I’m not. _

“Yes.” Never had I been less interested in Kylo’s positive evaluation. I took a deep breath.

“Whatever you say, boss. If I die, though, I’m gonna haunt your ass forever.” And I turned towards the non-cave to walk into the intense feeling of dread that was mounting. I was by no means ready for this. But I thought about when my therapist and I decided that what I needed to do with my life was just be ready to _ not _ be ready. But I wasn’t even ready for that, either! The deeper I walked under the pseudo-roof of vines and trailing moss, the worse I felt. I knew Kylo was still behind me, probably watching, but I wasn’t concerned about him anymore. Pretty sure Yoda said that the only thing inside this place is what I bring here with me. And I have a fuckload of baggage, so. _ This is like, the worst speed-dating with the Force ever. _

“Aeon?” came a soft voice, and I turned to see— Matt. My eyes flew wide open. He was blonde, in his glasses and jumpsuit, and obviously not real since his body was currently behind me not looking like that at all.

“Mattau?” Something spurred me to say his whole name. He looked back at me sweetly.

“Be what you are,” he said, as though recycled from my memories. 

“Matt, I’m sorry.” _ Sorry I kissed Kylo, sorry I got drunk instead of texting you, sorry I’m so scared, sorry you’re so scared, sorry I’m not even a real person for you to be friends with because I’m not supposed to be in the story— _

“You’re not sorry.” His expression was the same smile, but different somehow. Like something unwholesome had crept into his look. It was unnerving as hell. “You’re something much worse.” 

“What?” I asked, baffled and increasingly more freaked out. 

“You’re not supposed to be here.” 

_ Holy shit. _ I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t your story. You’re not supposed to be here, but here you are.”

“Why am I here, then?” 

“Be what you are. Are you Aeon? Or are you someone else?” His uncanny face was serious now, and he nodded over towards my left, opposite from where he was standing. I turned and saw my parents, but their faces were unclear. They kept shifting and graying out, like my memories of them were.

“Aren’t you our child?” they asked in unison. “Don’t you want to come home?” _ Holy shit. No. Fuck this. This is fucking awful! _

“Of course I do!” I replied, totally aghast. “I’m trying!”

“Are you trying hard enough?” asked my not-father.

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember your name?” added my not-mother. My heart started to race.

“Of course I do! It’s—” But, to my horror, I couldn’t remember. Giving a fake name to Lucky had been funny (although, the more times he’d said ‘Aeon Flux’ the more I kinda felt like an asshole and wanted to at least take the ‘Flux’ part off) but now I had _ forgotten _ my real name. 

“You have to decide if you want to be here or there, Aeon,” interrupted not-Matt. I stared back at him with mounting panic.

“Why are you making me choose?” I demanded, even though my hands were shaking.

“You can’t belong to both stories.”

“Um, what? Nobody can tell me how to get home! I didn’t ASK to be here!” 

“Yet, here you are.” His face was almost more upsetting because it was so…. Neutral. Apathetic, even. It didn’t seem like Matt, or even like Kylo. It made no fucking sense at all and it was driving me crazy. “You can’t just have your cake and eat it too, you know,” he added.

That sentence jogged something in my brain. A memory of someone I had pushed away from the front or even the middle of my mind for a long time. He wasn’t as tall as Kylo, and his blonde hair was short, and he was nowhere near as muscled and strong. But his name had also been Matt.

“You’re not Mattau. You’re fucking with me. Stop it,” I hissed at him, and suddenly I was looking at the figure of an ex of mine. Long story short, this guy abused me a long time ago. It wasn’t the worst kind of abuse, I guess. Not the kind you see in the movies, exactly, with all the hitting and bruising. It went even deeper than that, was more psychological. I don’t wanna get into it. Suffice it to say that seeing him there, and hearing that phrase he used to say all the time, was the definition of triggering.

“You have to choose, Aeon,” he said. Him saying my fake name-- was it a FAKE name?-- was the mental equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Was I not safe from him even in a fictional goddamn universe? I felt myself start to boil with rage.

“Get out. Get out of my story. Get out of my head, get out! GET OUT!!” I shouted at him, and before I could even think about what I was doing I sprang at him and knocked him over. All I wanted was to put my hands around his neck, punish him for everything he’d ever done to me or anyone else... so I did. I don’t know why. I was well past reasoning at that point. He coughed and sputtered and clawed at my hands. “This isn’t your story anymore! This is MY story! I’m the one who’s in charge of my life now, you piece of SHIT!!” I screamed at him.

“Aeon!” he croaked, and suddenly he was Mattau again, and his eyes got scared and shocked as he struggled to breathe. My eyes flew wide open and I gasped, leaping off him. 

“Fuck!” I screamed at nobody. “Stop fucking with me! What am I supposed to do?” I guess I was giving orders to the Force, now. Matt was rising to his feet, but by the time he stood up, he was Kylo. Dark hair, dark expression, dark clothes. 

“You’re supposed to help me, Aeon. You’re supposed to listen to me,” he said, and he seemed so much taller even than he already was. My whole body was shaking, trembling uncontrollably, fight-or-flight in full overdrive.

“How can I help you if you won’t help _ me_, too?” I demanded. But behind him was a little boy, who looked at me with the saddest eyes. And behind that was the guy I went on a juice date with, that I’d told Matt about. Over to the side of him, my former best friend who’d stopped talking to me after my first involuntary commitment to the hospital. One by one, a whole entire army of endless people from my past started to pile in. One-night stands, friends I’d ignored or blown up at or accused of something outlandish and delusional. Exes, dates that went bust, teachers who had been disappointed in me and other students who have been scared of me. Employers who had fired me. Doctors who had not believed me. I didn’t know where I was, or if they were there in the swamp with me, or what. I was starting to feel like they were all really there, a hellish reminder of what I could leave behind— and what I couldn’t. 

** _You are cruel. You hurt people. You can’t live up to their expectations. You can’t help them. You can’t hear them. You’re too sick, too broken. I hate you. Nothing you do has amounted to anything. Why won’t you just get better? Why won’t you come home? Why can’t you ever take our advice? The patient is non-compliant. You can’t just run away from everything that tries to hurt you. This isn’t your story, why are you here? _ **

The voices were almost totally overwhelming. I was gasping for breath, my heart was racing, my face was sweating. _ Fuck fuck fuck this is too real now this is way too real way too much I can’t fucking do this! What the fuck is this supposed to teach me about the Force?_

“Stop it,” I murmured. The voices got louder in response, and jeered at me too. ** _Stop it? Stop what? Telling you the truth? How much you’ve failed? You’ll never become anything! Too busy fucking your teacher again, and pining after someone who’s too good for you, and drinking and begging to be validated by other people. _ **I was on the verge of screaming, of coming apart, like every breakdown I’d ever had was happening all over again, all at once.

“Aeon?” I turned, and little Ben had stepped up in front of Kylo to stand right next to me, looking up at me. The other voices continued jabbering and saying terrible things to me, but I looked into Ben’s soft brown eyes. 

“Ben?”

“Aeon, I need your help.”

“I can’t fix it, Ben.” A lump formed in my throat along with a wave of guilt.

“It’s okay, you don’t gotta fix anything. Just help me, okay?” I stared at him, baffled.

“How can I help?” I asked.

“Be what you are.” He smiled at me. It was the opposite of not-Matt’s uncanny face, this time. His smile was genuine, sweet. I felt my eyes start to water. The voices continued to whisper and sneer all around me. I looked up from Ben’s smile, and sure enough, the thousand-eyed demon was there behind him where Kylo had once been standing. 

“I’m a lot like you, aren’t I?” I asked it in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t keep pretending I’m not. But this is my story. I’m not doomed to become a villain in my own damn story. I can _ choose _my path.”

“You can even create one that’s all your own,” came a voice that was both wholly new and unbelievably familiar. I turned around. 

There stood old man Luke with his beard, wrapped in his brown cloak. He looked like a ghost, like he was only half-there. And he was smiling at me. I was shocked, and strangely… relieved? To see him?

“That’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it?” I asked him breathlessly.

“There is no destiny, Aeon. You’re not _ supposed _ to do anything. But what you _ can _ do… that’s something else entirely.” All the voices still gnawing into my ears began to rise into a terrifying crescendo, louder than ever. I looked at Luke, then back at Ben and the demon who was now towering above Kylo, finally not superimposed over the dark hair and intense eyes like it usually was. Mattau was standing behind him now, smiling his real, soft, sweet smile at me. Everyone else just stared. ** _YOU ARE NOTHING! JUST GIVE UP! WHY DO YOU THINK YOU MEAN ANYTHING HERE? THIS ISN’T YOUR STORY! YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, YOU KNOW!_ **

“I choose my own destiny,” I declared quietly through the din of shouts. ** _YOU ARE NOTHING! I HATE YOU!! _ **

“I CHOOSE MY OWN DESTINY!” I shouted as loudly as I could, shutting my eyes and feeling the Force flowing through me like I never had before, like a dam had broken and was flooding me with the unstoppable eddies of light and darkness. My crystal was glowing, brilliant purple. “AND Y’ALL CAN SAY AND DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, BUT I AM STILL THE FUCKING PERSON WHO’S IN CHARGE OF MY STORY, DAMMIT!!” 

When all the voices fell silent, it was like the opposite of thunder. Instead of a sudden and terrible noise, there was a sudden and shocking silence. I opened my eyes to find myself standing back in the swamp in front of Kylo, and I knew this time it was the real him. 

Except as soon as I met his gaze and saw his face, I realized it wasn’t actually Kylo looking back at me despite the dark hair.

“Matt!” I exclaimed, a wave of relief hitting me.

“Hey hun,” he said simply, smiling a weary smile at me. “It felt like you were in trouble. So I kinda pushed my way up front. You okay?” 

“I, uh, I’m fine,” I assured him shakily. “You shouldn’t be out right now, should you?”

“It’s fine,” he replied vaguely. “I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m okay. I’m… okay.” I wanted to run up to him and hug him, but I felt rooted to the spot. After all the awful shit that had just happened to me, it was truly weird how calm I suddenly felt. 

“Okay,” he replied, and he held out a hand to me. 

“Do you even know where we’re going?” I asked him, smiling despite myself. 

“No, but we’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll used the Force for once. And there’s technology for this kinda thing if all else fails.” He grinned at me, that goofy grin of his. I reached out to take his hand.

“Fine,” I acquiesced. When I touched him, I felt an intense sense of warmth blossom inside me. Once again we headed hand in hand through a strange new world. 

“Where are we?” he asked as he picked his way through the bog just barely ahead of me.

“Dagoba.”

“Oh, I shoulda guessed. Fuckin’ swamp.” 

“Yeah, it’s not the hottest spot in the galaxy. I liked our planetside date much better,” I joked with him. 

“Me too,” he giggled a little, glancing away from me, pink coloring his cheeks. _ God I adore him. Who wouldn’t, though? _ Suddenly he stopped, and looked up and out ahead, his brow knitting.

“There’s a little gorge here. But there’s a vine up there that we can swing across on, can you see it?” He pointed upwards, and I mean, I guess I saw the vine. I saw a lot of vines. I grimaced, looking out over the terrain ahead. It was spooky, how easy it would have been to just keep walking through the bramble and take an unexpected tumble.

“We can’t go down into it?” I asked, uncertain.

“We could, but I think it’s a bad idea. There are pikobi down there, probably. It’s a good place for an ambush.” He started to climb up the gnarled roots of a huge tree towards whichever of the vines he felt was gonna become our rope swing, tugging me along with him. I couldn't remember what a pikobi was, but I figured it was a swamp critter and that was enough for me to want to avoid it. “Here’s the vine,” he said as we found ourselves on a big root-knob almost like a humped little platform. A large vine was indeed dangling there, running down into the tangle below. He pulled out Kylo’s lightsaber and in one quick motion cut the thick green rope down around his feet. As soon as I heard that iconic hum, it was gone again and he put it away. 

“You’re going first, right?” I asked, brow knit. 

“I thought maybe you should, just so I know you’re safely over. But I can go first and catch you.” He looked across the gulley, which was a little more obvious from this height. I could see a trickle of mud that was almost like a shallow creek down at the bottom of it, full of rotting vines and low fern-like plants. It didn’t look like a very long drop, but apparently it was big enough for something called a pikobi to take cover and wait for a snack to come by. “There’s a good spot to land over there, on another tree,” he pointed out.

“Um, sure.” There was more than one tree. I thought I could tell where he meant? Maybe?

“You can’t see it, can you?” he asked gently, smirking at me just a little. 

“I’m not exactly into swamp hiking,” I replied grouchily, pouting at him.

“It’s okay,” he chuckled, and tapped his finger on my nose. “I’ll go first.” Then he gripped the vine in his hands very purposefully, and I watched in awe as his powerful arms tested its strength. He tugged it, but the vine was sturdy. Before I could comment on what felt like a very last-minute check, though, he was swinging across the little gorge. He landed with surprising nimbleness on a patch of rough moss at the roots of another tree, and turned to smile at me.

“Nice,” I called out to him, one brow lifting.

“It’s easy!” he called back to reassure me. Then he gave the vine a mighty push, and it swung back towards me. I scrambled to grab it out of the air, and looked down. The gap was about a hundred feet across, which was feeling bigger and bigger the more I looked at it.

“For you, maybe!” _ Ugh. This does not look good. _

“C’mon, Aeon! I gotcha!” He beamed at me and opened his arms. “Just swing right here. I won’t let you fall.” I gazed at him for a moment, standing there on a tree, about as sweaty as I was, waving his fingers to encourage me with that smile on his face. He made me feel so safe. After what had just happened, it was such a fucking relief to see him. I took a deep breath and grabbed the vine. I stepped back from the edge of my lump of tree and took once more breath. Then, I launched myself across the gulley.

“AAAH!” I shrieked as I swung out over the mud, clinging to my mossy rope for dear life. I careened into the landing area and tried to put my feet on the ground, but started to slip. I let out a terrified yelp, feeling my body start to pitch backwards— but then strong arms were around me, gripping me tightly.

“Whoa there, wobbles!” Matt laughed, and helped me stand properly. “See, you did just fine!” 

“Uhh,” I replied, shaking my head as adrenaline pumped through me. “Shit.”

“Here,” he murmured, tugging the vine away from me and letting it fall back to its place. “You’re alright.” I felt like a weenie, for not even being good at swinging on a rope. But I also felt even more grateful that Matt was there, and holding me so tightly. “You didn’t even use the Force!”

“Me and the Force ain’t on speaking terms right now,” I snorted. _ Not after that stunt it pulled at the not-cave. See if I text the Force back for a while! _

“I assume you’ll tell me what happened later?” he asked good-naturedly as he released me from his deeply comforting grip and turned to continue forging forward. “I’m guessing it has something to do with Ky—”

I don’t know what he stepped on, but suddenly Matt’s foot slipped out wildly from underneath him and he went fumbling off the roots of the tree and down the incline. 

“Oh fuck, MATT!” I yelled, panicking. It wasn’t even that far, but the way he fell it was like he was landing on all the important joints in his body as he squelched down into the mud. When he hit the bottom, he coughed and groaned on the ground for a moment. “Shit!” 

“I’m okay,” he croaked back at me, one hand on his ribcage as the other pushed his torso up off the ground to look out at me from the bramble he was in. His clothes and his hair were covered in grainy dampness and clumps of dirt and moss. “I’m okay!”

“I’m coming to get you,” I announced, taking a step off the tree into the mess of ferns. My boot hit very soft soil and sank in just a little bit. 

“No! Stay up there, I’ll climb back up. Just,” he heaved, sucking in air. “Lemme catch my breath.” I stopped, looking down at him and huffing. 

“Let me help you,” I demanded, putting my hands on my hips.

“There’s no need, Aeon,” he insisted. “I’m just clumsy in the body, sometimes.” But he was chuckling, which made me feel better. 

“Fine,” I relented, rolling my eyes. _ You stinky goober. You gorgeous, beautiful, perfect stinky goober. _ He glanced up at me in my bossy pose, and laughed again. Then he groaned, and drew in another deep breath. I watched him intently, waiting for an excuse to descend and become helpful anyway.

Unfortunately, I got just that. It happened so fast that I didn’t even see where the fucking thing came from, but this creature that looked like a bird and a velociraptor had an ugly baby sprang up out of the dense foliage and squawked— and pecked down on him with its huge, black beak. I saw that thing tear through his clothes like they weren’t there, cutting deep into the flesh of his shoulder, and heard him give a strangled cry, and my eyes flew wide open.

“MATT!” I screamed, horrified, as blood started to seep out of the fresh cut and he crumpled in groans of pain. The thing, whatever it was, darted back for a moment. It was about twice Matt’s height, and its tail made it much longer, and that beak was huge and terrible. My gut instinct took over, and I plunged down through the mess straight for it. When it pecked out at him a second time, ripping a fresh wound right by the first one, I let out a howl. Then it turned to look straight at me with one of its reptilian eyes. 

“NO! STAY AWAY!” Matt tried to shout at me as he struggled for breath and clenched his shoulder with his opposite hand. I screamed again, like I was trying to scare the awful creature away. It turned and jumped a little, but didn’t seem phased exactly. More like it was just gonna jab me next. 

When the Force shows up all of a sudden, time almost slows down. It’s like suddenly you’re aware of every single tiny thing around you, and the swamp down there is mad dense with life that’s all connected by the Force. As that monster turned and let out a godawful, primeval roar at me, I felt the connection between it and myself. It was ragged with instinct, totally reactive and violent, nothing like the connection between me and Kylo had been. But I was absolutely filling it with my rage. 

“GO!!” I screamed at it, pushing with the Force like it was a battering ram. I was almost shocked to see it go flying backwards through the air, yelping as it crashed bodily into the trunk of a huge tree. “GET OUTTA HERE!!” 

I honestly fully expected that sucker to just hop back up and come at me again, but instead it staggered back up and started whining before it… ran away. It just split, like I was the most terrifying thing it had ever seen. I stared after it, shaking and gasping for breath, fists clenched until my nails bit into my palms. 

“Aeon,” came a weak voice, and I turned to look at Matt. He was crumpled on the ground in the mud, blood soaking his clothes from the wound beneath his gloved hand which still clamped down over it. 

“Oh no, no, no no!” I rushed over to him, and knelt down on one knee, totally panicking. “Matt, oh no! What do I do?”

“Comlink,” he groaned, and tried unsuccessfully to push himself upright. _ Oh shit, call for help! Of course! _ I dug into his pocket and pulled out the little tube to press one of its buttons. 

“Supremacy, this is Aeon, the Supreme Leader’s badly wounded, send emergency medical immediately! We need help!” It crackled and buzzed.

“This is the Supremacy, we’re dispatching an emergency unit to your location,” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Send Lucky!” I replied frantically. Something in my gut told me I wanted that droid specifically. 

“Who?”

“Send medical droid M-47777!” I barked back. “Now!”

“Heard. They’re on their way,” the voice assured me, and I shoved the comlink back into my own pocket. Matt was propped up on his elbow still, chest heaving, grimacing against the pain.

“We have to get out of this ditch,” I told him. “Can you lean on me?” He looked at me, eyes dark and exhausted. He said nothing, but shoved himself up and reached out towards me with his muddy hand. I grabbed it and pulled, and he made a terrible pained sound as I crouched and tugged him up. He was not lightweight, of course. But somehow I managed to help him stagger to his feet, and he leaned onto me with his arm over my shoulders. We began the climb up the side of the gully, and it felt like it took forever but I have no idea how long it actually took. We took it slow, and Matt heaved and groaned the whole way but stepped slowly and deliberately with my weight supporting him. I kept urging him along, saying things like ‘you got it’ and ‘come on’ and ‘up we go.’ When we finally reached level ground, he stopped and gasped for air, leaning back against the tree roots we’d been standing on before. 

“You know… where… shuttle?” he panted, looking down at me. Drops of mud from his hair fell onto my face.

“No,” I admitted. “But we have to move. What if that thing comes back?” 

“After that?” he asked, almost chuckling before he grimaced again with pain. “Doubt it.” I marveled at him, trying to joke around while blood was streaming out of two ragged cuts in his shoulder. Some of it had seeped into my shirt. He leaned harder back against the tree, leaning less on me, his knees shaking. 

“Here, just sit,” I urged, starting to sink down with his arm still draped over my shoulders. He slid stiffly down the knobs and gnarls, and we both hit the mossy ground with a thud. His arm went limp around me as he leaned his head back towards the canopy and continued to suck in the damp air, not letting his chest heave too much. I scooted out to turn around and look at him more directly, finally feeling tears start to well behind my eyes. His hair was clinging to his head in some places, running across his face and forehead haphazardly. I stared at his wound for a moment, the urge to do something— anything— to help pumping through me with no outlet at all. There was no med kit, I had no idea where the shuttle was, and whatever Force-magic had sent a giant dinosaur-bird soaring through the air before had no suggestions for how I could use it now. _ Oh fuck, I’m so fucking useless. I have no idea what to do. Doesn’t that wound need something? Not a tourniquet. But pressure, maybe? _

“Aeon,” Matt murmured softly, and I realized he was looking down at me. I felt his hand, the one that wasn’t covered in blood, weakly run the back of his gloved fingers across my cheek where hot tears were running. It fell down into my lap with the effort. “It’ll be alright.” 

I reached up to gently push his hair out of his face, and wipe some mud off his beautiful, prominent nose. His sweetness only caused more tears to leak out of my face, but for once I was totally unconcerned about my usual hatred of crying in front of people.

“Can I take off this coat? I want to take a closer look,” I asked him. He nodded faintly, and I unzipped the front of the article in question. His good arm he tugged out of it himself, the glove coming off with it, and I gingerly helped pull the other arm and glove off, careful of the wound. Beneath that he was wearing a black tank top, also ruined. The cuts looked angry and ragged, and they were already swelling and still leaking blood. “This is gonna need a real cleaning. And stitches. Or whatever you space-people have instead of stitches.” 

“I’ve heard about that,” he murmured. “They do that on planets where there’s not good medical equipment. Sewing up your skin sounds pretty awful.” He reached back up again to trace a clammy finger along the scar on my face that Hux had gifted me with. It wasn’t anywhere near as prominent as it would have been if I’d had stitches instead of the weird carbon webbing they had. Somewhere behind me there was a rustle in the bushes, and my head jerked around lightning-fast. I fully expected some other monster to come up and grab us while we were sitting ducks. But whatever had made the sound was gone in some other direction. I looked back at Matt, who was just looking at me tenderly beneath heavy lids, eyes a little bit glassy, face weary. 

“It ain’t so bad,” I told him, thinking of the several times I’d had stitches before. “They try to numb it some first, usually.” His eyebrows lifted just barely, as if he was impressed with me. “Can we get this off too? I wanna bind your shoulder. It’s still bleeding.”

“Right,” he groaned, and pushed himself off the tree. I helped him tug the shirt up and over his head, then pulled it ever so delicately over his shoulder and down his arm. I ripped one of the seams on it, and looked back at him. Even slumped over you could see how strong he was, how broad his shoulders and chest were, how sturdy and muscled his entire torso was. I started wrapping the tank top around under his arm, and he pressed the cloth into the angry wound with a hiss, and I got it as tight as I reasonably could before I tied it off. The whole time, I was aware of the long scar that curled down his pectoral muscle, the continuation of the one that ran down his face. He sagged back against the tree when I was done, closing his eyes. His breaths were shallower, now. I scooted closer to him and reached up to stroke his cheek, my ears pricked for the sound of our emergency help. _ Please get here soon, _ I thought miserably. 

“Don’t fall out on me, now, okay nerd?” I joked half-heartedly to him when he had been too still for just a moment too long. He cracked one eye at me and gave a faint grin. 

“Keep hoping Kylo’s gonna push me back in the copilot’s seat,” he murmured. “He’d deal with this better than me.”

“You’re takin’ it like a champ,” I reassured him as I pet his hair. “Just a little bit longer. Stay with me, Matt.”

“Not goin’ anywhere, hun,” he sighed. I took his hand and held it up against my chest like it was a precious keepsake, almost not noticing the tears that continued down my face. It started to rain, and I gave a rueful chuckle. 

“Good timing,” I groaned as water started to ping off my buzzed head and drip cold down the back of my neck.

“Feels nice.” Matt’s face was pointing up again as drops fell on it. His head started to loll dangerously, and I shook him.

“Hey now,” I said a little louder, starting to panic. “You promised!”

“Right here,” he said blearily, eyes rolling back down to me. They were very glassy now, which scared me even more. _ Surely he’s not dying, he’s just maybe gonna pass out from blood loss, but I don’t want that either! _ “Glad you’re with me,” he added, the corner of his mouth quirking up at me. I smiled through my tears at him. 

“I’m staying right beside you,” I told him earnestly. “Until you’re well.”

“My fierce one,” he sighed. The hand that was in mine rose to run the end of his pointer finger down the center of my lips before it fell weak again. “Fearless.”

“Or just stupid,” I replied. 

“The latter, I think,” came a voice- metallic and crisp through a vocoder. I spun around to see none other than Captain Phasma standing behind me in full armor. She was carrying a giant silver weapon, which looked like a blaster rifle with a bayonet or something on the end. _ Shit. Shit shit shit fuck what the fuck? Wait, WHAT THE FUCK?? _ I stared at her, frozen in place. There was no one else with her, and Lucky was nowhere in sight. My heart started racing. 

“You here to kill me?” I asked her bluntly. 

“That’s a bit hostile, isn’t it?” she sneered. “But yes.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'ALL KNOW I'M A CLIFFHANGER SLUT!!!


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HOLY FUCKING SHIT, Y'ALL!!

I felt the air around me get taut, like I was starting to feel the lines of the Force between me and every single falling drop of rain. I looked up at Phasma, standing on the edge of the little clearing where Matt and I were nestled under the tree roots.

"Hux in on this?”

“We feel that the First Order could benefit from better management,” she replied, and turned on something on her gun. A familiar streak of electric energy appeared at the end of her weapon— so not just a bayonet. A fucking laser bayonet. _ Cool. Awesome. _

“I already told you, I have no say over what Kylo—”

“This isn’t just about you, sniveling little whore!” she hissed. “It’s about him, too.”

"Wait..." I looked at her. Then, I glanced back at Matt, whose eyes were trying to look at her through the fog of his descending delirium. But they didn’t look like they were getting very far with that. Something about his sad expression, his weary look, his sweet softness even as he tried not to pass out right in front of me only because I asked him not to, made me… angry. Furious, at the chrome-plated woman behind me. _ How. Fucking. Dare. She. _ I glared back at her. “You will leave him alone.” 

“You giving me orders now?” 

“If you touch him, I swear to God—”

“What?” she goaded me, and she started to march forward through the bramble. “What’ll you do, pet?”

“Stay away from him!” I shouted, leaping to my feet, placing myself as squarely between her and Matt’s sagging form as I could. _ Fuck you, you blonde bitch! You will NOT hurt him! _

“Careful,” she said as she closed in on me. “This one hurts.” And just like that, she swung her laser-blade-gun at me and I just barely managed to twist to the side and dodge its white-hot edge. She swung it again- and again and again, relentlessly fast and terrifying, and I managed to duck out of its path by a hair’s breadth every time and I have no fucking idea how. I was reacting on instinct, just like I did when sparring with Kylo. But this time, I felt the dull edge of fear at my back with every motion. 

“You’re a traitor! You always were!” I shrieked at her, trying to fall back on psychological warfare of some kind, I guess. I was better at that. 

“Nobody believes you!” she barked, and swung at me again. I jumped, heart pounding. 

“I’m sure they don’t! Just like they don’t believe anything about Captain Cardinal or Brendol Hux, either!” I dashed out of the way and drew her a little further away from Matt as she lunged after me, trying to put distance between us and him.

“Brendol Hux was a beast! And Cardinal was scum!”

“And you’re a murderer and a traitor! Several times over!” 

“Of course I am. That’s the only way to rise above beasts and scum. Like you, like Brendol, like Cardinal, like my own brother, like Kylo Ren!” She swung at me again, and once again I barely managed to get out of the way on pure adrenaline. “I’m lucky that girl came to dispose of Snoke.” _ Whoosh! Whoosh! _ I clambered through the ferns, breathless and trying desperately to think of what to do aside from just run away. I knew I couldn’t keep running for long. “Since Ren was too weak to do it himself!”

“You know _ nothing _ about Kylo Ren,” I spat at her, starting to feel my anger come to a point. “He’s so weak, yet you wait until he’s wounded almost to unconsciousness to come and murder him?” My hands started to shake as I leapt up on a hunk of tree roots. 

“I strategize. I wait until the moment is right, and I assure my victory,” she retorted, swinging at my knees. I hopped backwards and she began to haul herself up onto the roots towards me.

“You’re a _ coward._” I glared down at her, feeling her become furious with me when I spoke that word, drawing that fury into my own like it was an extra Force battery. She snarled and rose to the top of the platform, and she was so much taller than me. There was no way I stood a chance. _ God I am so fucked! _

Then I felt it again, that surge of power I remembered from the training hall, from every time I’d flung poor Kylo against a wall, from earlier with the dinosaur-bird. But this time, it didn’t come on the heels of my (admittedly righteous, this time around) anger, or from panic. It came from the sound of Matt shoving himself upward, groaning, trying to stand and look up over the lip of the mass of roots and see what was going on. He was staring, terrified. 

“Aeon!” he cried out weakly. Time froze again. All in one flash, I saw his smile from the first time he’d been in my alcove in the medical bay. His exasperated looks as he ordered my dinner while I came down from the Namana candy. His terrified blush in the jewelry shop on Kaller. His infectious joy while we rode the speeder up to Plateau City. His hands in mine while I fell asleep to the gentle lullaby he hummed.

_ Hell no. There is no way she’s taking that from this world. Not Matt. Not sweet little Ben. And hell, not Kylo either. He deserves a chance. _ I turned and glared at her, and she dashed towards me with her weapon raised overhead, bellowing, ready to cut my ass in two. 

Before I knew it, there was something in my hand, and I was ducking forward and under the downward arc of her blow, and metal began to sizzle and spark as she toppled over behind me. It happened so quickly I almost felt like I was guided somehow, like my gut knew what to do better than I did. As she came crashing to the ground, her weapon went flying smack into the huge tree trunk where it shorted out and clattered off into the tangle of plant life. I stood deadly still, hands shaking as the smell of cooked flesh cloyed in my nose, ears full of a deeply familiar humming sound.

In my hand was a red light saber. _ Kylo’s _ light saber. It hummed furiously, its blade and crossguards wild and unstable. I blinked at it, then turned very, very slowly to look behind me.

There was Phasma, almost but not quite cut in half at the waist, her limbs still twitching as sparks from her armor continued to fly through the air. 

_ Holy shit. Holy shit. Did I just…? HOLY SHIT. _

I just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the fresh corpse I’d created. They say that taking your first life changes you. How it changes you exactly, apparently there’s a few theories. Right then, though, the only thing that felt different was that me and Matt were no longer in imminent danger of being slaughtered for political gain. Everything else was numb.

“Aeon Flux!” came a loud, urgent robotic voice. I looked over to see fuckin’ Lucky Sevens stomping over through the brush, waving its metal arms.

“Lucky!” I shouted, shocked as hell to see the droid. And not a little relieved. “Ma— Kylo’s hurt!” My head twirled back to look at the place where Matt had just been peeking over the roots at me, but saw nothing there. _ Shit! _

“What caused the wound?” Lucky asked as I dashed over to him, shutting off the saber en-route. Matt was slumped down on the ground against the tree, eyelids fluttering. 

“Some giant fucking dinosaur with a beak ambushed us and pecked the shit outta him,” I explained. “I tried to wrap the wound, to put pressure on it. They’re deep cuts, and they might be infected. We don’t have a first aid kit with us.” 

“You did well, Aeon Flux,” the droid told me as we converged on our invalid, who coughed and sputtered as mechanical arms helped push him upright. “The shuttle is southeast, more than two kilometers, but the Captain rode here on a medical speeder, which is just over there.” It pointed away, and I tucked myself under Matt’s armpit once again, his saber hilt still in my hand. “We can transport the Supreme Leader on that.”

“You’re a savior, Lucky,” I said. Between us we managed to haul Matt over to the vehicle in question, which had a space the size of a gurney to lay him down on. Lucky knew how to drive the thing, thank fuck. We shot off between the trees back towards the shuttle.

“I suppose we are not going back for the Captain, then?” the droid asked me dryly as we loaded the speeder into the open hangar of the shuttle. I snorted. 

“Hell fuckin’ no.”

“I thought it was very strange when she ordered me not to accompany her to the site of the wounded,” it mused. “I followed anyway, of course.”

"You went against your orders?” I asked, curious.

“It was against my orders to follow, but against my protocol to remain behind.” 

“Ah. So, you saw what happened?” 

“I did indeed. Most unfortunate.” 

“Yeah, I’ll say,” I muttered, rubbing my head. _ Like, that sure is one fucking word for it. _ I slumped in the copilot seat as Lucky took the shuttle up into the atmosphere, too tired to get my usual wave of space-anxiety. “Sounds like she was working with Hux, too.”

“It would perhaps be prudent of you to have the Lieutenant General arrested upon your return, Aeon Flux. Given the circumstances.” I blinked.

"Wait, I can do that?”

“According to your personnel file, you are acting Supreme Leader in the event of Supreme Leader Ren’s inability to serve at his post.” I blinked again.

“Seriously? What’s my rank? Assistant Supreme Leader? Assistant _ to _ the Supreme Leader?” 

“In your file you are listed as a Knight of Ren, Imminent Apprentice, Lord Aeon Flux, and heir apparent.” 

When Lucky just says shit like this like it’s last week’s newspaper headline, his mechanical monotone just makes it that much more fucking bizarre to hear. _ Did Kylo do all that shit to my file when he moved me to his old room, or more recently? _ Was any of that true, or was it like sketchy insurance billing type shit? Just on the papers to make sure he had what he wanted? Although, hearing Flux in there as part of my ‘name’ was the final straw on that joke. That was officially a dead horse.

“Lucky, do you have access to that file?”

“I do.”

“You got editing privileges?”

“I believe I do, but I do not edit anything other than your medical record. All other edits must be ordered by someone of equal or higher rank than the personnel file itself.”

“Good. Strike ‘Flux’ from my name, would you?”

“Why?” If droids can be surprised, it looked at me with exactly that. 

“I just wanna be called Aeon, for now.” The droid shrugged.

“Very well. It is done.” 

“Thanks, Lucky.”

“I live to serve. Are you wounded as well?” it asked, turning its expressionless metal head towards me.

“Uh, no. Not really at all. Least not physically,” I replied, looking myself over as though to make sure. I mean you never know, right? Adrenaline can be crazy sometimes. My body felt very far away.

“In that case, you are free to return to your quarters when we arrive on the _ Supremacy _ if you wish.” 

“I’m staying with him.” I looked behind us at the little speeder where Matt was lying unconscious as a fresh shot of antibiotics began to take effect. He looked almost peaceful. “I promised.” 

“As you wish, Lord Aeon.” I frowned. 

“You can just call me Aeon, dude. Titles are weird.”

“As you wish, Aeon.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aeon finally got to do some BIG TIME SITH LORD SHIT Y'ALL!! Jedi shit? who knows. let the past die... anyway
> 
> hello to all the new folks giving kudos lately!!! i really appreciate y'all!! : D


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt is the one getting taken care of, for once.

I was slumped over with my arms folded on the bedside table in Matt’s alcove in the medical bay, looking at his sleeping face. Immediately when we’d gotten back to the ship, I’d ordered Hux thrown into isolation. That was the only time I planned on flexing my apparent rank honestly, and I relished it. As soon as Kylo was back in shipshape, though, I planned to go right back to forgetting that I had any say in the military or political affairs of the First Order. It just seemed like a shitshow waiting to happen, and I had enough of those on my plate.

In the meantime, Matt was recovering. He’d been unconscious for a whole day, and I pretty much refused to leave his side. Lucky suggested about a million things I could do, but I was cemented to the spot. The one thing the droid insisted on for safety reasons was that I had an antimicrobial session and got some clean clothes. Which Mitaka was kind enough to oblige me and fetch. He sat on the other side of Matt’s bed from me, his brow furrowed.

“You ought to have a proper lie-down, ducky. You can’t possibly be well-rested.”

“I’m not,” I agreed nonchalantly. “But I’m staying here.”

“You know, if you nip off and then come back, he’s not likely to know,” the little man whispered to me.

“The minute I leave, he’ll wake up. You know how that shit always goes.”

“Fine, fine. Have you eaten, at least?” 

“Yes, I did eat some.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked, putting his hands in his lap like a fretting auntie.

“I’m fine.”

“You seem a little preoccupied, ducky.” I was very much only thinking about Matt, at that moment. I couldn’t shake the fear that he was gonna die, irrational as that was. I also couldn’t shake my intense need to be there when he woke up. Even if it was Kylo who woke up instead, I didn't care.

“She was gonna kill both of us, Duff. I don’t even know how I managed to kill her first. It’s weird, and scary, and I don’t wanna think about facing it without him.” Finally I looked away from Matt and at the lieutenant, who sighed. 

“That’s alright. I understand,” he nodded. “I’m only worried you’ll make yourself ill, in here. It’s been 36 hours since you got back and you haven't left once.”

“It’s okay,” I reassured him, softening a little. He was being a good friend, really. “I’m crazy, remember? If I wasn't here, I’d be going crazy someplace else. This is better for everyone involved.”

“As you say,” he relented, giving me a small smile. “I’m sorry for getting you in trouble, by the by. At the bar the other night.”

“You didn’t do nothin’.” I waved dismissively. “That was my own fault for getting drunk. And I think for making myself seen at all, outside of the rumors. Kylo likes to keep things… vague, with the subordinates. I don’t. You were just tryna help me feel better. I appreciate that.”

“Well. I’m just sorry it didn’t work like I’d planned, then.” 

“It’s okay. It’s the thought that counts.” I smiled at him, and it was wan but sincere. “Plus how else was I gonna find out you have a beautiful singing voice?”

“Goodness,” he muttered, flushing a little. “Thanks, ducky.”

“I still think we should form a band.” 

“Heavens, no. Not if the Supreme Leader is going to snap every time we play!” 

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I teased him.

“Home sleeping, happily not cloven in two by a lightsaber, I imagine.” He rolled his eyes.

“I’ll wheedle you down yet. Just you wait.” I looked back at Matt, who hadn’t moved at all. I wanted him to wake up, wanted to hear his voice so bad, I could feel the ache in my chest.

“I have to go, I’m afraid. Duty calls,” Mitaka sighed as he rose from his seat. “Will you at least ask the droid to roll you in a bed? So you can lie down while you wait?”

“Alright, sure,” I gave in, grinning at him. To be fair, though, a ‘proper lie-down’ sounded great right about then. My eyelids felt like lead.

“Good. Take care, ducky.”

“I will. Thanks, Duffy.” He gave me a warm smile, and marched off. I reached over to slap the assistance buzzer to summon Lucky, and do as I’d promised.

\-----

I was laying in the hospital bed that was bumped up next to Matt’s watching him, having fallen asleep there for God knows how long. He was still out, but he’d shifted a little, which was heartening. The lights were dimmed but not off, in our little alcove, so I could still see his face clearly. My heart felt like it was in pieces, waiting for the moment he awoke to jump back together and be whole again.

Spontaneously, I began to sing ever so softly to his motionless form. And to myself, really. It was a sweet, comforting song that a friend of mine wrote.

_“I’ll show you trust, it grows out in my garden,__  
_ _I must admit I planted it a bit too late,__  
_ _But it’s sprouting up in rows, the leaves starting to darken,__  
_ _Now I know the goodness it creates.” _

As I sang, I started to see him shift, just a tiny bit. I smiled, and decided to keep on singing. Even if he could only hear it in his dreams, the thought made me happy.

_“I’ll show you virtue, it grows out in my garden,__  
_ _I didn’t know it from the weeds that reached so high,__  
_ _But I’ve picked a great bouquet, oh darlin’ I am certain,__  
_ _That I’ll be better to you this time.”_

Now he was really shifting, his face turning a little towards mine as he put his weight onto his uninjured shoulder. 

_ “I’ll show you honesty, it grows out in my garden,_   
_ I have to say the southern clay can’t grow it right_   
_ But it’s blooming bright and true, and it’s never out of season,_   
_This harvest is sure to be alright.”_

Finally, as that lovely little tune wound to its close and I thought fondly of my friend who wrote it back home, I saw Matt’s eyelashes flutter. His breath changed, drawing in a big sweet inhale that caused his enormous chest and shoulders to swell up and then sink back down. I could write shitty poetry for days about his shoulders. 

When those dark eyes flitted up to meet mine, my lip started to tremble even though I smiled at him. Something about seeing him there, alive, clean, wrapped in white bandages and shirtless under a soft gray blanket… Yep. I was already crying, just a little. But holy shit, it was such an unfathomable relief.

“Hi,” I whispered. 

“Hey,” he whispered back. It was Matt, not Kylo. Which was what I had hoped, but honestly I would’ve been so happy to see either of them it would hardly have mattered. Even Ben, who cares? They would all be alive, and that was the only thing I’d been able to think about for two days. “Kylo said you were here.” 

“He did?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yeah. He woke up a little bit, earlier, and you were laying right here. Sleeping.” _ Dammit, Mitaka, what did I say? As soon as you’re not there! That’s when it always happens!_

“My bad,” I mumbled.

“He was happy to see you. I am too,” he said, smiling his goofy, precious, perfect smile.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I sighed. I felt a tear fall down my nose from the corner of my eye. We were both reclining, each head on a pillow, looking at one another. Aside from the little metal barrier around the hospital beds, we might’ve been lying on the same bed. He shifted and reached out to catch the tear on the tip of my nose with his finger.

“Thanks to you.” 

“Really it’s all Lucky. I had no idea how to treat your wound,” I said.

“Aeon,” he said reproachfully. “I remember what happened.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him, confused. 

“Phasma. You’re the reason we’re both not dead. I might’ve been halfway to passed out the whole time, but I will _ never _ forget that.” His eyes met mine very intensely, purposefully, earnestly. Matt’s intense eye contact was a different brand from Kylo’s. If Kylo was trying to bore into your soul, Matt was begging you to fall into his. It melted me every time.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “That.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I do it all the time.” He giggled at me. 

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“By some miracle, no.”

“Good. Does anyone else know what happened?” 

“Everyone knows,” I replied, my face falling stern. “Lucky was there. Droid optics record everything they see. He got nearly the whole fuckin’ thing on video.”

“Oh, wow,” Matt breathed, his eyes growing wide. “Thank the Maker for that droid, then.”

“I knew I wanted Lucky there for a reason. I just didn’t know what the reason was until after the fact.” _ Did the Force tell me to do it? Urg. _

“Aeon, I’m sorry.” 

“What for?” I asked him, baffled as to why the fuck HE was apologizing.

“I didn’t do a great job taking care of you down there. I probably shouldn’t have pushed to the front when I did.” His face sagged, probably with a pang of regret. _ What? No no no honey nooo. _

“Matt. It’s okay. I know you came out ‘cuz I was upset. My… mission wasn’t exactly fun.” I reached over to push a lock of dark hair out of his face. “You were trying to help, and that was more than enough. I definitely felt better talking you, after that fuckin’ ordeal.” 

“Mkay,” he hummed, looking back up at me with a flush coloring his pale cheeks. It was fucked up, how much my chest ached when I looked at him. I guess we were like, trauma bonded now, or whatever. Then I remembered all the shit that had seemed so important, before almost dying in a swamp full of dinosaurs. You know, all that interpersonal shit that I was struggling so bad trying to deal with? It was starting to look really stupid, by comparison to nearly getting jacked by Phasma and sent to join the Force Ghosts Jam Band.

“I kissed Kylo,” I confessed, spontaneously and in a rush. I could feel my heart beating harder as I stared at him, nervous.

“You— hang on, what?” he asked, looking deeply confused.

“I kissed Kylo the other night. I didn’t mean to. We were arguing, and I was drunk. But I’ve been feeling shitty ‘bout it ever since.” I watched his face contort as he tried to digest my statements, and his mouth open to say something only to close again. _ Please be nice to meeeeeeeee. _

“Um,” he said finally. “Why… why would you feel bad about that?” 

“Be… cause… he’s? Your alter?” I left out the ‘and my teacher’ part. I wasn’t preoccupied with the ethics, right then.

“...So?” Matt asked, but he seemed as confused by his own question as I was.

“I thought maybe you wouldn’t be okay with me doing that,” I mumbled sheepishly. He looked like he was thinking for a moment.

“I mean, if that’s something you want to do… I didn’t realize he felt that way about you.” His expression was more unreadable than I liked.

“I dunno if he does, actually. I think he might be transferring his Rey crush onto me. Which I don’t think is great. Maybe I’m wrong about that, I don’t know. But it’s weird.” I carefully dodged the question of whether or not I wanted to kiss the Supremely Attractive Asshole back. Jury was still very much out on that one. “Anyway, I was drunk, is my point. It was stupid and we both realized that pretty much immediately. I just… I don’t want you to think I like Kylo more than I like you.” I was looking up at him like a dog looks up at its owner after chewing up the toilet paper roll. He looked at me like he was trying to solve a puzzle. 

“Well, um…” His mouth quirked.

“I like you, Matt. I like you a whole lot.” My heart thudded, that soundtrack of elation and terror that always played behind my interactions with him. He blinked at me and swallowed nervously. _ I think he’s too new at this to know what to say, _ I thought. _ Kylo wasn’t kidding. Uuuugh God. I have to make it obvious. I HAVE to. _ I sighed. “Like I would much rather kiss you than Kylo.” He blinked at me again.

“Oh!” he said suddenly, his face turning bright pink. His head pulled back into his shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell, but he couldn’t stop a huge smile from breaking out across his face. “Oh okay, I get it now,” he murmured. He tugged the blanket even further up over his shoulders, and half buried his face into his pillow while his grin got even bigger. _ Ohhhhh my FUCKING GOOOOOOD!!! ! ! ! !!!! _

“You are literally the most adorable thing in the known universe, Matt, my God,” I exclaimed. “I have never met someone this precious. I didn’t believe it was possible to be as fucking precious as you are literally being right now!” 

“Maker,” he mumbled. “I… wow.” I smiled at him like an idiot.

“Take your time,” I reassured him. He could’ve flailed into his pillow all day, blushing and grinning and closing his eyes like that, and I would’ve just laid there and watched. He peeked back up at me with one visible eye, but as soon as he saw my face his eyelids slammed shut again. 

“I… I want you to kiss me, too. I like you so much, Aeon,” he confessed, mostly to his pillow. I felt my heart explode into stars that came out through my eyes, like my body was gonna levitate off the fucking bed. _ HE LIKES ME SO MUCH!! HE WANTS ME TO KISS HIM!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA _

“Well that’s good news,” I said softly to him, totally downplaying how stupid happy I was, but my smile was ready to beam itself right off my face into the nearest sun. He looked back at me finally, still only with one visible eye.

“I’m nervous,” he nearly whispered.

“Why?”

“‘Cuz… I haven’t kissed anyone in a long time. Like, a _ really _ long time.” I kept beaming at him. _ Oh you beautiful creature, you flawless celestial blessing, you confection of joy. _

“That’s okay. I give good feedback,” I assured him.

“You won’t be mad if I’m bad at it?” 

“The only way to be bad at it is if the person you’re kissing tells you what they like and what they don’t like, and you don’t listen.” He canted his head at me, his signature heart-melting quirk.

“Oh,” he replied, as though it hadn’t occurred to him. But it seemed to make him feel relieved, which was my only goal

“Do, um.” I swallowed. “Do you… wanna do that, sometime? Kissing, I mean?” He nodded his head really fast in response. “Cool,” I affirmed back to him, my whole body full of beams of light. _ YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!! _I wanted to kiss him right there, of course, but I could hear the sound of Lucky’s feet making their way towards us. And his wounded shoulder… everyone thought he was Kylo... it just wasn’t a good time. I mean, any time was perfect, but I was trying to be polite. And I was afraid of messing up his healing if I got too excited. And Lucky seeing was not ideal, either. Or anyone else.

“Supreme Leader, I see you are awake,” said the droid in its usual businesslike monotone. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m good, I’m very good,” Matt said, clearing his throat, totally trying to be Kylo and failing miserably. Not that Lucky would have cared, much. 

“That is very good news. May I examine your wound, sir?”

“Uh, sure,” Matt said, glancing at me as he sat upright. I just grinned at him as he kept the blanket tucked under his armpits with this adorable and oddly in-character modesty. Lucky removed the bandage, and under it was a huge purple bruise hacked through with two carbon mesh-filled scars. It actually looked a lot better now than it had while fresh despite the color and swelling.

“Your healing is coming along very nicely, sir. The bruising will take a little while to fade I am afraid, but the wounds themselves are well on their way. You should be fit to return to physically demanding work in about 48 hours.”

“Sounds good,” Matt said, but he was glowing way too much to even approximate a gruff tone. “Do I have to stay here much longer?”

“You may return to your suite whenever you wish, Supreme Leader. I am but a lowly medical droid.” I eyed Lucky.

“He’s asking for your recommendation as a doctor, Sevens,” I interjected.

“Ah. I recommend you remain here for the next 24 hours, after which I will release you will full medical clearance.”

“Alright. Thank you.” Matt glanced at me, as if checking his performance, but looking at me was only gonna make it harder for him to be fake-mad. I held in a giggle as hard as I could.

“Of course, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you presently, sir?”

“Can you bring me some fruit?” Matt asked. _ Oh my God. Just him asking instead of telling… this is hilarious. _

“Certainly, sir. Would you like anything, Lord Aeon?” Lucky asked me. I assumed it used my title because of Matt’s presence, which just forced me to stifle another giggle.

“Just some stim tea, please.” Stim tea is the space version of coffee, I’ve learned. I needed caffeine. 

“Indeed. I will return shortly, my lieges.” I watched the droid shuffle off, eyes narrowed.

“My _ lieges_? I think that droid is fucking with me,” I murmured. Matt turned to me, impish grin on his face.

“Did it just call you _ Lord _ Aeon?” he asked me around his rising giggles. 

“You’ll have to ask Kylo about that,” I replied with a frown. He just kept giggling. 

“Lord Aeon doesn’t quite fit. You should have him call you Your Radiance. You should have everyone call you Your Radiance.” He leaned back on his elbow, looking at me with obvious admiration. _ Jeez, it makes me wanna explode when he looks at me like that. Christ alive. _ My eyes wandered over his muscled shoulders and arms, which were now visible even as he still covered his chest with the blanket, and I think I bit my lip without realizing it.

“So, I should probably talk to Kylo soon, right?” I asked him in an effort to distract myself from his beautiful shirtlessness. It was unsuccessful.

“Oh, he’ll come out as soon as he feels like it,” Matt replied, shrugging. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Okay, I won’t.” I grinned at him. Of course I wanted to hang out with Matt as long as possible.

“So wait, how come you kissed him, again?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow. He seemed way more curious than sad or upset. “It sounds like there’s a story there…” 

“Oh, you wanna hear about how I got drunk and did karaoke?”

“What? Maker, yes!” He scooched himself around to get more comfortable, leaning towards me, excited. “Please tell me all about it.” I sighed. _ Thank fuck I asked for stim tea. This is a long story. _

“So, the other night after my lesson with Kylo went real bad, I was talking to Mitaka…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAA THEY DID IT PLZ CLAP FOR AEON THEY GOT THEIR ENTIRE SHIT TOGETHER!! only took a near-death experience..... lmao
> 
> don't worry. there is very cute shit on the horizon. buckle up :3


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the ghost of plot yet to come...

About twenty hours later, Kylo hopped back in the internal pilot’s seat to try to get back to his duties. For which I was eternally grateful, because being acting Supreme Leader was still not at all interesting to me. Chucking Hux into the brig was one thing, but literally anything else I avoided like the plague. Which, to be fair, I’m pretty sure all the subordinates appreciated, since me giving orders as someone who knew absolutely nothing about running the First Order (to say nothing of how ideally I’d dismantle it, because it sucks) would have been a shitshow.

Of course, I told Kylo everything that happened before he left the medical bay, and showed him Lucky’s holo-recording. He listened to the story with an almost completely opaque expression on his face, as was his wont. But it still made me nervous, like more than usual.

“So yeah, sorry ‘bout fucking up the captain of your ground troops or whatever she was,” I said after a longish pause wherein Kylo had said nothing in response yet. He looked at me, his eyebrows slightly lifted in a strange expression that bordered on… impressed? But also like he was just taking it all in.

“Sounds like she gave you plenty of reasons to,” he murmured finally, rubbing his forehead. “You say Hux is in confinement?”

“Um, yeah.”

“We’ll have to figure out what to do with him.”

“We? I think you mean _ you _ will.”

“He tried to murder you too, remember? If Phasma was working with him, which is very likely, he tried twice. I think it’s fair to give you some jurisdiction over his fate,” Kylo pointed out. I frowned.

“I don’t wanna be responsible for that.” _ Because if it’s up to me, at this point, I want him dead. _ Frankly that thought was terrifying to me. I wasn’t ready to be responsible for two deaths yet, I hadn’t even processed the first one. Of course, there was no such thing as a fair trial or due process in the First Order. Not that it worked all that well on Earth, but still.

“I gave you your title for a reason, Aeon,” Kylo said, and he was stern but still impressively calm. “I don’t like these rumors about you. I don’t like that my officers disrespect you. It reflects poorly on me, and puts you at risk. You wanted respect. This is my endeavor to grant you that.” His eyes speared mine, full of whatever it was that was so intense and unfathomably attractive to me. I became acutely aware of how shirtless he was, sitting up in his inclined bed next to me. He completely lacked Matt’s bashful modesty, letting the gray blanket fall around his hips while the rest of his gorgeous, broad torso leaned back, turned slightly towards me. His abs were just unreasonable. I exhaled. _ Oof. _

“Okay. I get it,” I muttered, frustrated in more ways than one. I could barely recall the crush of his lips on mine, due to the drinking I’d been doing at the time. Mostly I recalled how extremely hot my nethers got when it happened. _ Oof oof oof. _ But, he was also being decent to me. Like, _ really _ decent. Instead of pushing me to submit or yelling at me to do better, he was actually giving me a chance to step up to the plate… about capital punishment. Of course that would be the way it went down. It couldn’t be something chill, oh no. I almost regretted my campaign for respect. I exhaled again. “Thank you,” I added. I mean, I wasn’t trying to be a dick. He nodded, and for a moment we were both silent, not looking at each other.

“When it happened,” he asked suddenly, quietly, in that deep voice, “What did you feel?” I looked back at him then, but my usual mixture of suspicion and aversion didn’t come on quite so strong this time. 

“Anger. But on y’alls behalf, rather than mine. I wanted to protect Matt, and you, and also Ben.” I wondered what he would have to say about that. It was a little more light-side than his usual brand. He seemed to be pondering my response. 

“That explains it,” he murmured.

“Explains what?”

“Your crystal.” I looked down at my necklace, and my crystal was glowing purple. The color of utilizing your anger and passion with clarity and intention, basically. _ Damn. I guess I might actually end up with a purple saber. _ Maybe I’d been drawn to that color for a reason. Who woulda thunk? My concern about the subject must’ve been clear on my face, because he spoke again. “I don’t think anyone’s seen that color since Order 66 was issued.” 

“Oh.” I was a little too exhausted, too shell-shocked maybe, to really know what that meant. Or to even start getting grandiose about it in my head, yet. Was it a big deal? Or was it mostly just a bad sign that I was constantly teetering on the edge of falling headfirst into the dark side? Just because Mace Windu managed to walk that line… my track record for balancing left something to be desired. That’s a bipolar joke, by the way. 

“It may change, of course. But it’s unprecedented to train someone like you, Aeon,” Kylo said. Now I was eyeing him suspiciously again. He sure was laying it on thick, at least for him, and after our little makeout session the other night I was on high alert for ulterior motive. People who get their shit together for the sake of someone else… it doesn’t stick, usually. I was viscerally aware of that. 

“Thanks,” I muttered, looking away from him. I was definitely blushing despite my mistrust, though. I felt a hand slide under my chin and lift my face up to meet his ember-filled eyes again. His touch was so different from Matt’s, so much more assertive and powerful even when it wasn’t harsh. _ OOF. _

“Believe me this once, little one.” He said it like a direct order, but his voice was a gentle, predatory coo. _Ulterior motive, indeed._ My heart pounded, my breaths coming fast and shallow.

_ Uh oh. Oh no. Oh fuck. Oh God. Oh no no no, I like this. I like this way too much. Nope. He can’t have me that easy_. I let a bratty little smirk touch the corner of my mouth.

“I’ll try,” I replied, and even though he jerked his hand away from my chin a little bit, and glowered a little bit, I could tell that against his better judgement he’d started to like my insolence, sometimes.

“I will return to my duties, and call for you when it’s time to decide what to do with Hux,” he said with the smolder not quite gone from his look. “And then, we’ll get back to the real work.” 

“Sounds good to me,” I replied, leaning back on my hand, still faintly smirking. There was a moment of silence while our gazes held out their passive aggressive battle, but then he gave me an expectant look, like he was waiting for something.

“You may leave now.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Unless you’d like to watch me change clothes.” It was my turn to raise an eyebrow, letting my eyes rake down his body. _ Maybe I would… _ But it sounded too much like a veiled invitation, too much like he’d get some satisfaction from it. And I was in Deep Brat Mode. So I shrugged and slid off the hospital bed, plucking my datapad up off the bedside table and slipping my feet into my boots.

“Later, then,” I replied, and threw him a coy smile and a little peace sign as I sauntered out of the alcove. _ Deal with that, Supreme Fuckboy, _ I thought smugly. 

\-----

That night in my quarters, I was trying to sleep. I felt exhausted, but my brain was whirring and buzzing with thoughts about Kylo, and what to do with Hux, and how I was gonna make sure Matt and mine’s first kiss was amazing. I avoided thinking about Phasma, or the meaning of the vision in the swamp. There was a lot to unpack there. I missed my therapist. 

I was right on the edge of sleep when I felt something very strange, like someone was watching me but worse. I sat bolt upright in bed, staring around my room in the darkness. I’d had this feeling come over me before many times, like a lightning bolt of paranoia, and I would always sit up and look all around me into the shadows. I’d usually see the shadows shift (whether it was real or a hallucination, I could never quite say) and stare at them until the shifting no longer felt like something was looming towards me. Then I’d lie back down and slam my blanket over my head and try to go to sleep. I kind of expected that was what was happening then, too, despite it never having happened on the ship.

So when my eyes landed on the figure of a bearded man in robes standing at the foot of my bed, I yelped and nearly jumped out of the covers.

“Hey, easy! Settle down, it’s just me,” said the man. I stared at him, hand on my chest while I tried to breathe through the jolt of panic.

“Luke?” I asked faintly, noticing the faint glow he was emitting. He seemed spectral, for sure. _ Is Luke’s Force-ghost talking to me right now? Jeez. _

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’m glad he brought you down to Dagoba. I’ve been struggling to reach you.” 

“Uh,” I replied, confused.

“You’ve been assimilating into this world slowly, and reluctantly from what I can tell,” he remarked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Not super easy to find you, even through the Force.”

“Damn, I’m sorry, I guess I’ll leave you my number next time.” I narrowed my eyes at him, slightly defensive. _ What does he mean I’ve been assimilating slowly?_

“You don’t have to get mad. I know it’s disorienting to wake up in another universe one day, but I was under the impression that most people from wherever you’re from would be pretty excited about it.” He sat down on the foot of my bed, looking over at me appraisingly.

“You… what?” I was too baffled to even process that. 

“I’m the reason you’re here,” he said slowly, like he was talking to someone who didn’t speak English. I stared at him again, but with a wholly different kind of surprise on my face. 

“So this entire shitshow is your fault?” I asked, incredulous.

“Rub it in,” he grumbled guiltily.

“Not Kylo, I meant _ my _ shitshow. My own personal hellscape, here.”

“I really thought you might have some fun.” 

“You put me on the flagship of the First Order and thought I would have _ fun?_"

“Well, when you put it like that…” He frowned. “Anyway, I’m sorry it hasn't been more enjoyable. But I also brought you here for a reason.” 

“How the entire fuck can you be telling me that you zapped me here from another universe, right now?” I blinked at him, shaking my head a little. “I am fucking dreaming. Or hallucinating. They’re basically the same thing anyway, one just happens when you’re awake.”

“You’re in a place where both of those things are ways you can convene with the Force,” he pointed out. “If you go about it the right way.”

“I don’t ‘go about’ my hallucinations, dude. They ‘go about’ me!” 

“That’s part of why I picked you.” I stared at him in total disbelief. _ You brought me here because I have psychosis? _When I gestured that he might continue this train of thought, because what the fuck was I supposed to say anyway, he sighed. “You’re in tune with something much greater than yourself. Not just because you have hallucinations or whatever else, but because you work really hard to be lucid about them. To understand them. And you’re just crazy enough to believe in yourself, which is generally invaluable in anybody.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said flatly. _ Just manic enough to do something stupid, more like. _

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I know it’s not always like that. I know sometimes you’re so depressed that you cut yourself off from everything.” That… got to me a bit. Y’all remember who else had cut himself off from everything, including the Force, of course?

“Yeah.” My face softened.

“But it’s not too late just because you feel that way, turns out.” He smiled at me. I took a slow breath. This was starting to sound an awful lot like a pep talk.

“So why am I here, exactly? What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to help me.”

“With what?” As if I didn’t already know.

“With Ben.” _ Yep. That’s what I thought. _ “I don’t much like how his story ends. I brought you here to help me change it.”

“Well you overshot your timeframe, buddy. I dunno how his story ends. The last movie hasn’t hit theaters yet.” I rolled my eyes.

“I know. I didn’t wanna risk any of that shit where you try and prevent something only to cause it to happen,” he replied. “It didn’t work for my grandfather so well.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“So no spoilers, huh?”

“No.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Honestly, you’re already working on it. I want you to help him see the light.”

“Ah, yes. A redemption arc. I thought that was what Rey was for?” I asked tartly. Nevermind that I had, in fact, been working on it. Or trying to. With very little success, I might add, or at least that’s what it felt like.

“Rey’s got her own story.”

“So do I!”

“Yeah, but you get to choose yours. Rey’s has already been written. She can’t deviate from it without interference, just like Ben can’t.” He looked at me very soberly. “You have a choice none of the rest of them have.” I blinked at him. _ Wasn’t my whole tirade at Kylo that one time about how he COULD have chosen another path, but I was stuck here on this massive space-boat just doing whatever I had to in order to get back? Or, wait. Could he have chosen it, really? If it’s been written? Unless I presented him with that idea…? _

“Wait a minute. I’m here because I can break the fourth wall? Jesus,” I groaned, rubbing my forehead. 

“Well, yeah, basically.” 

“How come you can break the fourth wall, then?” I asked, brow knit. He held up his see-through hand. 

“I don’t toot my own horn much, seeing as I fucked some things up pretty bad, but I _ am _ a pretty powerful Force user, you know,” he replied dryly. 

“Oh.” _That’s definitely not canon, but whatever. This canon is apparently extremely fluid._

“So you can probably do things with the Force the rest of us could never dream up, just because you’re not limited by the universe,” he pointed out. I frowned.

“I’m forgetting home, Luke. Like, the more I learn about the Force, the less I remember about my own life. I don’t know if I can afford to get in any deeper, here.” Nevermind that I was getting enmeshed with both Kylo and Matt, and I already used the Force on accident when I got angry, and apparently now I was making a fucking light saber. Ugh, why was Luke here making me feel hypocritical, instead of inspired?

“It’s too late, kid. You’re in it.” _ Fuck. _

“How the hell am I supposed to get out of it?” I asked, suddenly upset. “How the hell am I supposed to get back home?”

“Do you trust me?” Luke asked, and looked expectantly at me for my answer. I looked back, fully uncertain. _ Do I trust you? I mean I know you’re Luke Skywalker and all that shit, but damn. I don’t wanna forget my past. I don’t wanna be a different person when I get home. _

“Can you get me home when this is over?” I asked in reply, my voice getting small and scared.

“You’ll be able to get yourself home. I expended a lot of energy getting you here. I can’t do that again, but you can.” 

“Am I gonna want to, by then?”

“I don’t know. But you seem pretty determined, to me.” He gave me half a grin. I rubbed my forehead again. _ Fuck me, man. _

“Okay, fine. I trust you,” I sighed. As though I had any other option. “How am I supposed to help?”

“There’s no prescription here, kid. You come from somewhere else, so nobody here can tell you what you need to do. But you’re already showing him a few things I don’t think he’s been shown in a long time, maybe ever,” he said.

“Like what, exactly?” _ How to tame a brat? How to ask for consent? Ugh. _

“First of all, you understand his feelings. You’re empathetic to him, which nobody else much is. And, you’ve offered a real apology to him at least twice, now. I never had to guts to do that.” His face looked a little sad. I sat up straighter. _ Damn, okay. That was real talk. _ “You’ve told him pretty much verbatim that he has to show respect to get it, and it looks like he’s feeling motivated to try it out.”

“If he changes for my sake, he won’t really change, though. I’ve dealt with that before,” I pointed out. “It don’t work so good.” 

“The fact that you know that is another reason why I think you can do it. And, on top of all that, you’ve talked to Kylo, Matt, and Ben. The last person who ever spoke to all three of them was me.” He smiled. _ Oh shit! What the fuck!_

“Hang on, you know about his DID?” I asked, surprised to say the least.

“DID?”

“Dissociative Identity Disorder, is what we call it where I’m from.”

“Oh. I think I’m the last person he told before you, actually. That was a long time ago. I admit, I didn’t handle it well.”

“What happened?” This was suddenly getting… relatable.

“Well, I knew about it for a while. But at the Academy, when I started to really see how much Kylo was the one out front more and more, I got scared. I wanted to pressure him into pushing all those selves together. I didn’t really get it at the time, that they’re all different people. I sorta thought of it like fragments of one personality. I thought, if I can just get Matt’s kindness and Ben’s hopefulness in there with all that anger…” He shook his head ruefully. “But it wasn’t that simple. Snoke had already gotten to him by that point. Had been getting to him for a long time, right under all our noses. I made that mistake, and it was all he needed to be pushed into the dark.” 

“Shit,” I breathed. Uncle Luke had tried to force Kylo’s system to integrate. I know that sometimes DID people do end up integrating, and sometimes that even goes well for them, but not if they’re bullied or forced into it, usually by therapists. Bullying and forcing pretty much anyone tends to turn out badly, of course. But it’s a lot worse when the people bullying you are supposed to be taking care of you.

“I know I fucked up. But I’m trying to make it right.” He looked at me in earnest. “You can help him see the light in a way that I don’t think anyone else can. Because you're not stuck in this world. I know you don’t have the same thing going on, with the DID as you called it, but you have something similar enough that you understand him in a way the rest of us don’t. And, moreover, you have his trust. That’s something I don’t deserve anyway, but nobody else has it.”

I sat there in silence for a moment. Suddenly I truly felt like a chosen one-- chosen by Luke to do something I had no idea how to do, without a game plan or the network of support I’d had on Earth to keep my own screws relatively in place for so long. So, not so much a Chosen One via some god or prophecy, destined for greatness. More like a weird choice for a bad idea. I closed my eyes. _ God, this is a huge mess. A huge fucking mess. And now I feel responsible for how it ends up. Uuuuugh. _

“I really don’t know how to do this, man,” I confessed, shaking my head. “I mean, I can’t fix him--”

“I don’t want you to fix him. I want you to show him how to fix himself,” he said pointedly. I looked back at him, caught a little off-guard. “I want you to lead by example. I’ll be around, but I think you’ll figure out the way this should go as you keep going.”

“Ya think?” I wasn’t so sure, of course. “What if I don’t, though?”

“Well, it’ll be too bad, because I can’t pull a stunt like bringing you here again,” he replied with a shrug. “That was a one-time deal.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was afraid of.”

“It’ll be fine. Just do your thing.” Suddenly he was rising off the bed to his feet. 

“Okay…” Did he really want me to do that? My ‘thing’ so far was mostly fighting with Kylo while simultaneously wanting to have sex with Kylo against all logic and reason, doing a terrible job handling my feelings about Matt, accidentally and inconsistently wielding the Force, and almost getting murdered by mutinous subordinates. And doing karaoke. In space.

“Listen, kid. I don’t normally say it like this, but this really is my last ditch effort to save my nephew,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and giving me a final stern look. “Believe in yourself. And don’t fuck it up.” 

“What the...” I swore at him-- but he was gone. Vanished in even less than a puff of smoke. I stared at the shadows where his translucent body had been seconds before. _ Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ, you have GOTTA be KIDDING ME right now!_

Baffled nearly into speechlessness, I threw the covers off and marched into my bathroom to take a shower. There was no way I was gonna get any rest after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wanted to throw this lil chapter up for y'all ^_^
> 
> once the movie starts up later this week i'll be writing up a storm! there are of course a few chapters ahead of this one (i'm dropping one more before RoS comes out on Thursday bc i love y'all) but once the movie is informing the fic i'll be marking stuff for spoilers. i can't wait to give y'all the next bits!! <3


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally happening!!!!!!!!

I spent a whole lot of energy setting up my Real First Date With Matt. I’d get excited, then nervous, then get cold feet and wonder if this was a bad idea, then get excited all over again. I was talking to myself almost nonstop in my room while I laid all my clothes out on the bed trying to pick what to wear, looked over my food options on the datapad, took a shower, and tried to find a way to play music. I didn’t know what kind of music they had in space, really. But I couldn’t make out with Matt and play guitar at the same time! I mourned the loss of my date night playlist. And Spotify. And YouTube. _ Dammit. _

“Surely this thing has music on it,” I grumbled at the datapad while I poked around. I still wasn’t all that versed in how to use it, so it didn’t take long for me to throw the thing on the bed with frustration. “Maybe I’ll just ask Matt. Then he can pick the music, I guess.” In my head, most of what I would’ve wanted for a perfect first date wasn’t available. Ideally there would be carefully selected music, something nice to eat, maybe a movie to calm the nerves, or maybe a glass of wine each but not more. You can’t give consent if you’re drunk, people. Plus every relationship I’d ever had that started with a drunken night ended up badly anyway.

I’d managed to decide on almost nothing by 2000 hours, except clothes, just barely. Literally two minutes before he rang, I’d managed to finally pick something out and hurriedly chuck the rest of my wardrobe back into the closet. Mitaka would have been very irritated with me. 

“Hi,” was what Matt said when the door opened. He slid inside pretty quickly, despite the fact that my hall was usually desolate. Force of habit, I guess. 

“Hi,” I replied breathlessly, feeling my cheeks start to flush almost immediately and my gut start to do a little dance. _ It’s awful early to be getting nervous, _ I thought. His hair was back to blonde after being in Kylo disguise for a while. He was wearing a gray shirt that buttoned up, tucked into his nice black trousers, sleeves already rolled up as usual. “You look nice,” I added, beaming.

“So do you,” he said bashfully, rubbing the back of his head with one hand while the other was tucked behind his back a little stiffly. I’d picked out a neat gray tunic that we’d gotten at the market on Kaller, which the Twi’lek woman had custom fitted on the spot. It had a high neck and no sleeves, which always made me feel powerful for whatever reason and so was turning into my go-to style on this ship. I’d thrown it over the black stirrup leggings and belted it just to feel… I dunno. Polished? Semi-formal? To be honest, we were both a little overdressed for a date that was really just hanging out in my quarters. But whatever, I wasn’t mad.

“Thanks,” I replied dreamily.

“I, uh. I brought you something.” Matt pulled his other hand from behind him, and in it was-- a flower. A big, royal purple flower that looked sort of like a lily, actually. _ Holy shit did Matt bring me a flower? AAaaaAAAAAAaAAAaaAAAAAA!! _ I must’ve turned three more levels of red.

“Oh hell,” I said, smiling with one hand on my burning cheek as I reached out to take it. “That’s so sweet…” I took a whiff of it, and of course it smelled really nice. 

“It’s a nova lily,” he explained. “Someone in the bio-lab is growing them. I… may or may not have snuck in to get you one.” He giggled.

“Holy shit, you _ stole _ me a flower?” 

“‘Stole’ is a strong word, hun, doncha think?” I laughed at him. 

“Sure, sure,” I said, giving him a little wink. “Let me put it in some water!!” Of course then I bounded over to get a cup from the water dispenser, leaping like a possessed gazelle, and after filling it I slid the long stem of the lily into it and tried to make it lean elegantly before putting it on the low table in front of my couch. 

“I’m glad you like it,” he said. I was pretty sure he was gonna be that shade of pink all night, if not even more so by the time I was done with him, and I was fine with it. I beamed.

“I love it. Purple’s my favorite color.”

“Mine too!”

“You are _ so _ cute,” I told him emphatically. I reached out to take both of his hands, and they were big and warm and soft despite their array of little scars. Before he could blush too hard or stammer too much more, though, I took mercy on him and changed the subject. “So I couldn’t figure out how to play music in here, and I also couldn’t decide what to order for dinner. I need your help.” 

“Oh, you wanted music?” he asked, perking up. “I mean, you can always play something on the guitar…”

“Yeah but I mean like, for when I’m doing literally anything else,” I chuckled. 

“Ah, okay. Give me your datapad.” We sat down on the couch and he showed me how to sync the datapad with my room’s control hub. Which, it turns out, is where I could adjust EVERYTHING. Humidity, temperature, the alarm clock, the security settings on my door lock, and apparently also music. He scrolled through the options that were listed for music, and started playing something that was instrumental and very chill. I was into it.

“Wow, there’s so much here,” I said as I looked at all the songs. Half of the titles weren’t even in English, or any other recognizable language.

“Yeah, people upload stuff onto the cortex. Reading material, music, holos, games. It’s a public library, which they figure keeps the content from being too… I dunno. Weird, or risque, or something. Like, if your commanding officer finds out you put some kinda porn on the cortex, you’ll probably get in trouble,” he explained, giggling. 

“That… is so fuckin’ funny,” I snorted. First of all, I had the Star Wars equivalent to the internet. It was only sourced by the people on the ship, but there were a metric shitload of people on the _ Supremacy _. Second of all, there was porn in space. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess, but it still made me laugh. Aaand it made me curious, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Matt. Not at the moment, anyway.

“What’s even funnier is that sometimes people upload weird shit anyway,” Matt told me, his voice hushed as though he was telling a secret. “It’s always a scandal. Kinda hilarious, but it always pisses Kylo off.”

“He’s all business, that’s his problem,” I pointed out. “I can’t wait to hear all about the next time it happens from Mitaka. That dude has the scoop on everything, lowkey.”

“I’m glad you made a friend, by the way.” He smiled at me. “Though I hope he doesn’t encourage you to drink anymore.”

“I think he might do the opposite, now. After what happened last time.” I wondered if Mitaka was feeling guilty still. “I dunno if Kylo was more angry about the drinking, or about my being onstage. He likes his mysterious and dreadful persona thing. Maybe we could scope out other places to chat than the bar.”

“Mhm,” Matt nodded. “I wish I could go with you places,” he added, a little sadly.

“Yeah, me too,” I sighed. “But it’s okay. Even if you could blend in more, I think people would notice you because… well, they notice me a lot, now. More than they used to.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, well. Ever since I, um.” I hadn’t quite uttered the phrase ‘I killed Captain Phasma’ out loud yet. I’d substituted the word ‘killed’ for multiple other things. Disposed of, fucked up, fired, cancelled my subscription to...

“Since Dagoba?” he asked, saving me the discomfort. I nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.” He rubbed his chin for a second, then looked back at me and reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you… you know, okay? After that?”

“Um.” I shrugged a little, and made a face. “I guess so? I haven’t thought about it much, to be honest. It’s a little overwhelming.”

“The first time always is.” He said it less like some kind of platitude, and more like he actually knew what it meant. Like he _ understood _. I eyed him.

“That’s what I hear.” _ Has Matt killed someone before? Or is he just sharing the emotional experience of Kylo? _I wasn’t… disturbed by the idea of Matt killing someone, exactly. In this universe, and given what I knew about his life, it wasn’t unlikely. But I’d never even considered it before, and I guess I had another moment of realizing that there was more than one side to all the characters here, including the people who lived inside Kylo Ren’s body.

“It’s okay. It takes time. But you kinda didn’t have a choice,” he pointed out. “It was either you kill her, or she kills all of us.” 

“Yeah. But now Kylo wants me to weigh in on what to do about Hux.”

“That seems fair.”

“Sure, but it also means I have to decide whether or not I want to kill someone again.”

“You won’t have to execute him or anything. Hell, Kylo’s prolly gonna do it himself."

“But I’m still responsible for the decision to kill another person,” I explained, shaking my head. “And the worst part is, I want him dead. I mean, he deserves it.”

“Is that a bad thing? He more than deserves it, hun.”

“I just… I dunno. I dunno if it’s a bad thing or not. I used to know how I felt about that shit. But it’s different, here.” Matt scooched closer to me on the couch and put his big arm around my shoulders. I leaned into his chest, pressing my cheek against his collar bone. 

“It’ll be okay, Aeon. One way or the other,” he reassured me. I sighed, wanting to believe him.

“I hope so.” 

“You wanna decide what to get for dinner?” he asked, taking the datapad and propping it up on his lap. I smiled a little. It was not Murder-Related Identity Crisis Time, after all. It was Real Date with Matt Time. I reached out to tap at the datapad and open the mess inventory. 

“You think they’ll have anything good?” I asked. 

“That Alderaan noodle dish is really good,” he suggested, pointing to the screen. 

“Hm, I like noodles.”

“Looks like they have a bunch of fresh stuff in from planetside. Good timing.” I looked up at him and he smiled down at me. 

“Lucky us,” I said. I wanted to kiss him right then, but the angle was all weird… Also, I wanted to eat. My stomach growled. Loudly.

“We better get you something delicious, hun,” he commented on the noise. 

“I’m pretty hungry. I don’t remember what I ate today.”

“Maker,” Matt huffed, and scrolled around on the screen while I held up the datapad this time. I stifled a giggle. _ The mom-friend is strong with this one. _

“I’ll let you call it. I have no idea what half this shit is, anyway.” I was used to the usual canteen fare, but the influx of new things to choose from was too much for my low blood sugar.

“Done. Do you want something to drink?”

“Oh, you mean like, juice?” I asked him with a grin. He blushed again. “It’s my honorary first date drink now, I guess.” 

“Well, there’s some blumfruit juice…” he stammered adorably.

“Perfect.” I beamed at him while he finished the order. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” He smiled at me, eyes nervous. One of our signature pregnant pauses fell. But either the moment wasn’t just right yet, or I was just being real damn nervous. Luckily, I got an idea.

“So, Matt,” I said conversationally, putting a hand on his knee as I turned a little more towards him. “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, okay? When was the last time you kissed somebody?” 

“Oh,” he murmured, and the blush deepened a little. “Uh… technically never?”

“Really?” That seemed… surprising?

“Well, okay. I didn’t used to go out front much at all. I was too... nervous.” I nodded, encouraging him to continue. “So I never really had any relationships. Not of my own, anyway. Kylo, though…” 

“He is unnecessarily assertive, it’s true,” I commented dryly. 

“Yeah, and sometimes I was kinda there for whatever he was doing. I just really wanted the experiences, you know? But I always had to share them. Always just co-piloting. Which was fine really, since I had no idea what to do anyway.” He shrugged, and I could feel how stiff his arm around my shoulders was. _ He’s so nervous. It’s so cute. It’s kinda making me less nervous, actually. _

“That makes sense. What’s it like, sharing those experiences?” I was fascinated.

“I’m kinda watching from far away, I guess. I don’t push Kylo to make a lot of choices, because… well. I, well, uh... I don’t think we want the same things, when it comes to being, uh. With other people.” He was looking away from me now, like this was awkward as hell for him to try and talk about. 

“So, you don’t want to have sex the same way he does?” I tried to paraphrase as helpfully as I could. A lot of my anxiety was fading, replaced by the desire to make Matt as comfortable as possible. And honestly, once you say the words other people are too nervous to say out loud, it really seems to chill them out. Which is why I’d waited so long for Matt to pipe up about liking me first, of course. 

“Um, yeah. Pretty much.” His eyes were still firmly staring at my hand on his knee rather than my face.

“Well, you are different people,” I said, smiling at him. Now he looked back at me, and smiled a little, too. 

“You don’t mind all that, do you?” _ Oh, that face, I just wanna smother it with kisses. _

“No, I don’t mind,” I told him gently. He relaxed, visibly relieved.

“Thanks. I was… worried.”

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, either.” 

“Really?”

“Of course not! I want to respect you, silly.” That smile on his face got even goofier, even sweeter. My heart was singing.

“Okay, well. I want to do a lot of things, eventually, I’m just… I dunno if I’ll chicken out,” he muttered.

“That’s okay too. You can chicken out whenever you need to. We’ll figure it out,” I reassured him. We grinned at each other like idiots for a second, faces inches apart, and just as I was wondering if now might be the right moment… my door chimed. “Food!” I exclaimed, temporarily distracted from my internal debate by the concept of calories. I think I actually took a flying leap up from the couch to the door to open it. 

“Thanks, man,” I said to the dark-haired woman in her officer’s uniform standing there with our stuff. I pulled the cart full of food across the threshold and waved to her surprised expression just before the door slid shut. I turned around to haul the cart over, and realized that Matt was gone. I looked around, confused. “Uh, Matt?”

A blonde head with glasses peeked over the back of the couch. 

“Are they gone?” 

“Yes, they’re gone, you goose,” I laughed, and his incredibly tall body emerged from its crouch behind the furniture. “Sorry, I got carried away and forgot to let you hide.” 

“S’okay,” he shrugged happily, shuffling around the side of the couch to come over and help me unload the meal cart. “I can put these on the table, right?”

“Sure,” I sighed, taking a deep breath. “This smells amazing.”

We sat down to tuck in, and I poured each of us a glass of juice before we started very ceremonially. Which made him get all bashful again, which was exactly the point, obviously. Everything was delicious, and I was hungry enough that I made quick work of it despite trying not to rush. 

“Obviously you hated it,” Matt commented as he looked at the empty plates, grinning.

“Awful,” I said. “Send it back. I’ll need a redo. Another order.” He laughed. 

“Do you like the blumfruit juice? Since that is clearly the most important part of the meal.” I grinned at him.

“Yes.” 

“Good.” I watched him stack the plates up with the largest plates on the bottom and the forks all on top, just like I would have. He got up to put them on the cart, too, and wiped his mouth of some non-existent smudge before leaving his napkin on the pile. He was being so tidy, and I had a feeling it was for me. Not that he was a mess, necessarily, but. You can just tell when Matt’s being cute and considerate and nervous and a little bit fussy.

“Your wound’s doing alright, right?” I asked him.

“Oh yeah, it’s great. Not too bruised anymore or anything.” He touched the shoulder in question, before coming back around to sit on the couch. I sat up a little straighter when he did. 

“That’s good.”

“It’s kinda funny, that I’m the one who slipped down there on the damn tree,” he said with a tiny chuckle. “Since I was supposed to be helping _ you _ out.”

“Only in hindsight,” I groaned. “Every time I think about it, I have a miniature panic attack.”

“I’d rather it was me than you.” His eyes did that thing where they looked at me like I was the only thing in the universe. Normally I would have given him some lip about how I felt the same way, that I would much rather it was me than him and he was much more important around here than me anyway. But my thoughts got a little lost in our eye contact. My heart thudded in my chest, but this time it was almost like a beat I was supposed to dance to. I slid closer to him, like a lot closer. 

“Matt?” I asked him quietly.

“Hm?” He was tensing up as I turned my body towards him, getting extra nervous.

“Can I show you something?”

“Yeah,” he murmured in reply. I took in a breath, and leapt off the diving board. Which is to say, I leaned my head up and forward and _ finally _ fucking kissed him. 

I went really slow, of course. I wasn’t trying to scare him, after all. His mouth was closed, and he was still as a statue as I pressed my lips up against his. I gave him a few little, tiny kisses, never really pulling away. Ever so tentatively, he started to pucker up, to kiss me back. I could almost feel his massive body start to loosen and tremble as the sensation washed over him. That response was possibly the most precious and wonderful thing I’ve ever created in this world, to be honest. 

I reached up with my hand to touch his cheek, and then I ran my fingertips down to his chin very gently, tugging just enough to coax his lips apart as my hand fell away. He made the tiniest sound to ever come out of such a large person when I took his bottom lip between mine and pulled it just a little. His mouth falling open even more, he finally took a breath and started to lean in towards me. I swear to God, I’ve never had a kiss deepen that slowly in my fuckin’ life. But every second of it was like my body was just reaching a higher and higher electrical charge, especially as he finally started to move and take little nibbles and kisses of his own. He was the first one to slip his tongue out experimentally over my bottom lip, which made me give my own tiny little noise of excitement. But our bodies were twisted in a weird way, because despite all my fretting I didn’t actually find the ‘perfect position’ or whatever, so I swung my legs up over his lap to scoot in even closer. Hilariously, of course, that was when I managed to knock his glasses half off his face.

“Let me get those,” I giggled, pulling away from him to pluck the comically large frames off his face and leaning over to slide them safely onto the table nearby. He smiled, and almost chuckled, but his eyes were heavy-lidded and never left my lips until I came back and started kissing him again. 

His hands finally moved, and found their way to my hips as though some natural instinct (or co-pilot memory, maybe) had finally kicked in. I could feel them shaking a little, but it was seeming less and less like he was nervous and more and more like he was just exhilarated. Which, seeing him melt like that… was really doin’ it for me, I’m not gonna lie. Such a large, strong body, buckling because of lil ol’ me? _ Ooooof. _ His excitement was throwing so much fuel on mine. I slid my hands up to either side of his face and raked my fingers through his hair, and he let out a little groan into my mouth. Our lips and tongues took their time; I was just letting him explore all the ways he could kiss and be kissed. I ran my tongue across the plush threshold of his bottom lip, from one side of his mouth to the other, and he made the most incredibly satisfying little whimper. I felt my pelvic floor muscles tighten. _ Hot damn, I forget how nice it is to take it slow. Not that there wasn’t a truly absurd amount of buildup, or anything, but. _

“Can I kiss your neck?” he murmured breathlessly as he tugged his lips just barely away from mine. I immediately got crazy butterflies, my heartrate picking up again. If y’all still think asking someone to do something isn’t cool… you’re just wrong. It’s like this extra jolt of anticipation and excitement, and it’s respectful. Plus, saying ‘no’ and picking something else to do is a lot easier and less awkward than trying to stop someone who’s already doing something. That’s your second consent lesson for the day, I guess.

“Yes,” I whispered back, and I felt his hands grip me and basically lift my butt off the couch and into his lap as he pressed his pillowy lips into my neck. _ Holy shit! _ I felt suddenly like it was my turn to melt, shuddering as he wrapped an enormous arm around my back and the other stayed firmly on my hip. I whimpered as his nose slid up towards my jaw and he began to suck delicately on the soft skin just under it. When he worked his way down towards my collarbone just above the high neck of my shirt, my eyelids fluttered. “Shit,” I hissed. “I thought you said you weren’t good at this?” 

Some muffled word came from his mouth, but he didn’t bother to clarify as he jumped to the other side of my shirt collar to kiss along my clavicle towards my shoulder. His touch was both gentle and fervent enough to be completely intoxicating. I nuzzled his ear, kissing it gently, feeling his breath hitch against me. 

“Oh, Maker,” he groaned softly as I ran my tongue around the outside of his ear experimentally, burying his face into the crook of my neck.

“I love seeing you get excited,” I whispered before I took the liberty of nibbling on his earlobe. I felt his shoulders jerk slightly in response, felt him inhale sharply and exhale a warm, shuddering breath against me.

“Aeon,” he breathed, his arms around me pulling me in even tighter for a moment. He started laying little kisses up my neck, and then made to kiss me again. Our open mouths pressed so close, but not quite together, and I held that distance just long enough to hear him give the slightest frustrated moan before I relented and closed the gap, before our tongues started to trace lines around each other, before it felt like every single part of me was sparkling with terrific, electrifying energy. 

Then that thing where you’ve been necking for a while but you’re not sure if you should keep getting any closer to second base happened. You know, that weird thing where the momentum stalls? But it wasn’t that weird, with Matt. I couldn’t help but chuckle against his lips.

“Wow,” I murmured, pulling away from him just enough to look into his big, sweet eyes. His lids were still heavy, his look a little hazy. I’m pretty sure my eyes looked the same, though.

“Yeah,” he agreed, eyes dancing between holding my gaze and looking back at my lips like he wasn’t tired of making out yet at all. His own lips were ruddy and a little swollen, his jaw sightly slack. 

“You look amazing right now,” I informed him.

“Speak for yourself,” he said, and he was so focused on me that he forgot to blush. My heart, which had only just started to slow, thudded a little faster again. Matt and Kylo could both be prone to intensity of focus, I guess. But Matt’s was the soft, worshipful, kind. I reached up to push a lock of blonde hair out of his face. 

“I’m sorry I was such a weenie and took this long to say something,” I said, suddenly a little self-conscious. 

“It’s okay.” His mouth which had fallen so serious lifted into a little smile. “I wasn’t exactly taking initiative, either.”

“Well, you were nervous for a good reason,” I laughed. “The first time you do anything with someone else is kinda scary.”

“I had a feeling it wouldn’t be like what I felt when Kylo was the one doing it. But I didn’t know exactly what that meant.” 

“How’d it turn out for you?” I asked him with a little smirk. Now, he turned pink.

“Uh, incredible.” 

“Good.” I felt his hand leave my hip to come up and touch my face with shaky fingers. 

“I don’t think I ever even wanted to kiss someone as much as I wanted to kiss you, Aeon,” he said quietly. “I mean, I guess I liked a couple of people back at the Academy. Since then, almost nobody. But when Kylo found you in the shuttle… I was so curious.” It was my turn to blush.

“How long was I unconscious when I showed up here, anyway?” I had never asked that question before, I realized. 

“Three days. I kept coming to the med bay check on you, and Kylo wanted me to stop. But after you woke up, I knew I wanted to at least talk to you.”

“You hadn’t spoken to anyone in a long time, had you?” I asked, remembering Luke’s spectral appearance the night before. 

“No. I wasn’t interested in piloting at all for a long time.” He sighed, and his hand trailed down my neck over to my shoulder and down my arm lazily. 

“Well. Considering what happened…” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t either, if I were you. The Kylo show isn’t a fun one.”

“I just tried to keep us together inside, yanno?” 

“In your head, you mean? Like, inside your headspace?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I was just trying to keep Ben from flying off the handle. Kylo flew off the handle enough. He doesn’t like it when I compare the two of them. But they both lose their tempers, and it’s up to me to try and keep the peace inside since I can’t do much about Kylo’s behavior.” 

“I mean. Maybe you could.” I looked at him with my brow knit. Alters could come out enough to become co-hosts, I knew that much.

“Maybe. But as long as Kylo is Supreme Leader, it might do more harm than good.” He leaned forward and rubbed the ends of our noses together.

“Well, maybe in certain moments you might protect Kylo in a manner to which he is unaccustomed. Who knows.” I felt like maybe I was pushing some latent agenda, at that moment, so I decided to drop the subject. “Either way. Thank you for taking the risk and coming to talk to me.”

“Thank you for talking back,” he said with a little chuckle. 

“Nobody who met you would ever wanna _ not _ talk to you,” I pointed out, beaming. “You’re the sweetest person on board. You make me laugh. You help me out a lot, and you show me new and wonderful things all the time. And you’re sooooo cute!” He blushed again, and shrugged.

“I dunno. I mean, thanks. I mean, uh,” he stammered. 

“See look, you’re doing it right now, the cute thing!”

“Maker,” he swore, and I laughed, which made him laugh, and we just giggled for a minute before--

I looked around, suddenly surrounded by a strange and awful howling gale as I was battered mercilessly by ocean waves. The sharp smell of it, all the rust and leaking chemicals having leeched into the water over time, was awfully familiar. I was back in that strange place where I’d seen Kylo and Rey before, the remains of something that could have been a huge spaceship or some giant industrial building. I blinked, and then suddenly I was inside some other part of the wreckage, tucked away in the shadows with the sound of the wind and water dimmed by the metal under which I was now sheltered. Before I could be terrified at the disconcerting change of scenery, I blinked again. 

All was darkness. A voice, gravelly and cold, grated into my ears, ringing through the vastness of the space I was in, surrounded by its own laughter. 

** _Your coming together will be your undoing._ **

My eyes flew wide open as I recognized that voice.

“Aeon!” called a voice that felt much more real than the one I’d heard just before it. I shut my eyes again, squeezed them tight, willed myself not to be seeing whatever it was that I was seeing. _ No more fucking visions! Not right now!_

I felt a warm pressure on my stomach, and all the sounds of that place, wherever it was, were gone. I slowly opened my eyes, which were unfocused and bleary.

“Oh, thank the Maker,” sighed Matt’s familiar face. As I returned to my body, I realized that I was still on his lap, but I was leaning backward with my head lolling off to the side. One of his arms was supporting my back while the other was pressed into my lower pelvis as though he’d been trying to hold me in place somehow. I was almost afraid to blink again. 

“What happened?” I asked, and my mouth felt swollen and slow. 

“I dunno, you started shaking a lot and your eyes rolled back--”

“Seizure.” I pushed my upper body forward to lean into him, against his shoulder, and his hand left my stomach to wrap around me and hold me there. 

“So that’s happened before?” he asked, hand stroking my back gently. _ Oh, that’s nice. _

“Yeah. Apparently it looks crazy on the brain scan machine.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Happened to have a seizure once in the med bay. Lucky told me the machine had to be broken, or something, because the reading it took of what happened in my brain was supposedly impossible.”

“Why?”

“He said a bunch of physics shit I didn’t really know how to process at the time. I only remember a little bit about physics. Anyway, he said that the reading basically meant I was in two places at once.” I wanted to shrug, but my body was limp against his, and his hand on my back was too soothing to interrupt anyway.

“Wow. Was that all that happened, then?”

“No, I saw a vision too. I told Kylo about it. It was Rey and him, they were about to fight on some weird planet on a bunch of wrecked metal in the ocean.”

“Oh. I vaguely recall him having some weird emotions about Rey he hadn’t had in a long time. They weren’t quite the same as they used to be, but. Must’ve been when you told him.”

“Maybe.” I frowned. I still didn’t know how the fuck Rey fit into this puzzle, and I had no way of ingratiating myself with her to find out. Not from this close to Kylo. Unless she was repressing a crush too, and just showed up to hold a fucking radio over her head outside his window, or something. Which seemed unlikely. 

“Did you see anything just now?” Matt asked softly. 

“Yes.” I said. “The same place as before, only as soon as I blinked I was inside some other part of it that was sheltered from the ocean. And soon as I blinked after that…” It came back to me viscerally, that voice. That familiar laugh. “They wouldn’t really do that, would they? Surely it’s not gotten that bad…” 

“You lost me, hun, back up. What happened after you were in the sheltered place?” I leaned up to look at him, his concerned expression that I knew so well by now.

“I was nowhere, but I heard a voice.”

“Okay. Did it say anything?”

“It said… ‘your coming together will be your undoing.’ And it laughed. And I swear, Matt…” I shook my head, and rubbed my brow. _ If the writers are really that fucking lazy, I’m gonna fuckin’ explode. _ “I swear it was the Emperor’s voice.” 

He looked at me for a moment, stunned into silence, blinking. 

“Wait, what? The Emperor?”

“The fuckin’ Emperor. THAT Emperor. Palpatine.” I rolled my eyes. _ Oh my God please do not let the writers be THAT FUCKIN’ LAZY, to bring Sheev back? Maybe it’s not quite him, maybe it’s like a Force ghost of him. Which is almost but not quite the same thing. Fuck. That’s not better. Uuuugh. _

“Holy shit,” he breathed, blanching a little.

“It hasn’t come true yet,” I pointed out. “Neither of those visions.”

“We already talked about this, Aeon. Your visions might not end up predicting the future, or whatever, but they’re important. You have to tell Kylo.”

“Ugh. I’m gonna tell him. That, I promise you.”

“Okay, good.” He held me close, brow furrowed as he looked at the floor. You could almost see the wheels turning inside his head, like he was trying to figure it out. _ Oy, babe, there’s nothing to figure out. If it’s true, the writers are just lazy, _ I thought. _ Well, God knows what they’ll have him do... _

“Hey,” I said softly to Matt, lifting a hand up to stroke one of his cheeks before I leaned in to plant a kiss on the other one. “It’s okay. It could just be that I’m nuts, after all.” He looked at me, face serious and worried, mouth in a kind of almost-pout. Maybe that was just the way his lips looked when he closed his jaw tightly. Like I wanted to bite them, you know. Gently.

“Don’t count on that.” He brought a hand up to my cheek, then, and pressed his forehead into mine. “My fierce little thing,” he added in a sweet coo. My heart jumped. 

“Oh, wow,” I mumbled. I felt something else happen, along with my standard issue stop-being-nice-to-me blush. I felt something tighten in my groin, and catch a little in my throat. _ Holy shit. _“You… I like it when you call me that.”

“I’ll be sure to do it more often, then,” he chuckled softly. But there was a warble in his voice. An uncertainty of sound that betrayed something he was feeling, and I coulda sworn it was the same desire that I felt. I shifted my face and took his bottom lip between my teeth again. I was suddenly _ very _ distracted from the acute distress of lazy writing in the Star Wars canon. Clearly this was not the most important time to be focusing on that, anyway. I released him after a gentle nip, and felt a smirk on my face.

“How, um. How long can you stay?” I asked him, barely above a whisper. 

“What time is it?” he murmured back, clearly just as distracted as I was. I turned (reluctantly) away from his face to look at the hub on my wall. 

“It’s almost midnight.” _ Oof. _

“Shit. I think Kylo is gonna interrogate Hux tomorrow.”

“Does he… expect me to be there?” _ Fuck. He probably does. _

“I don’t know.” 

“I forget that y’all don’t always have two-way communication.”

“Not about everything that happens outside, no.”

“Well. I haven’t got a message from him. But…”

“Either way, I should probably go,” he groaned. He sounded as profoundly reluctant to leave as I felt to let him go. 

“Just a minute.” I pulled his face to mine and kissed him again, and he fell into it immediately, responded to everything in kind, but his hands were stone stiff where he held me as though he was afraid to let them wander too far. I let the kiss linger and fade before I pulled my face away. “Okay. I just, yanno, wanted a little more of that before you left.” 

“Mm,” he replied, smiling through his heavy eyelids and red lips. 

“I’ll see you soon, hm?”

“As soon as humanly possible.”

“I really like that answer,” I said. In response he gave me another kiss, and this one was light but it was still slow and sensual and _ oh God, I REALLY wish he didn’t have to go right now! _But, to be fair, sex on the first date wasn’t a good idea for me, and I knew it. Plus, he’d already said he was nervous as hell about it. We could have that conversation at a more relevant time. 

“Good,” he said when he pulled away. Then without warning he grabbed me under my knees and arms and hoisted me up off his lap as he stood up off the couch. I giggled, wrapping my hands around his neck. 

“Haven’t been up here in a long time,” I commented with a grin. He smirked back at me, cheeks delightfully ruddy, and walked over to the bed where he laid me down ever so gently. 

“Sleep tight, Aeon. Don’t worry too much. You’ll figure all this out. And I got your back.” He smiled now, the big sweet smile he saved for when he was looking at me like I was the most special thing there was. Which he was also doing. My face got very warm. 

“Goodnight, lovely,” I sighed dreamily. His face when I said that was one of barely-stifled surprise and excitement, and he let out an involuntary squeak. I laughed as he shuffled away to grab his glasses. 

“See you soon, fierce one,” he called as he opened the door to my chambers. 

“See you,” I echoed, and we smiled at each other until the door slid shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't wait to upload this one for y'all :3 IT'S SO FUCKIN CUTE a;slgkh'flghaga;kj


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the interrogation tables have turned...

When Kylo called me down to the interrogation room where he had Hux bound up, I deeply considered not going. Because I had no fucking idea what to do. And I was horrified to make the wrong choice-- and now a latent concern that I was gonna fuck up the timeline, in a bad way, had started to filter into my thoughts. That, I managed to chill out more about, because I remembered Luke’s reference to the Anakin gambit. _ The more you try to prevent or cause something, the more likely this is to go sideways. _ The rest, though, I couldn’t quite reconcile. 

But I decided to go, for Kylo’s sake. Yes, I did it for Kylo. The Supreme Fuckboy. Who really _ was _ making as solid of an effort to respect and even empower me as he knew how. I couldn’t just chuck that in the bin. If he was gonna try his best, it wasn’t right for me to coast on by. Plus, Matt wanted me to go, too. So fuck it. 

I dressed up in the most imposing of my clothes. Which involved me showing off my arms (I was getting pretty strong, at that point, which I was feeling good about) and wearing a vest with a high collar and tails because it just seemed fancy and snobby, which were two of Hux’s favorite things to look like. I didn’t mind intimidating him, even if I still wasn’t sure I was okay with giving the order to execute him.

Kylo was standing outside the interrogation room when I got there with two trooper guards, and the door was shut. He looked me up and down, and I was pretty sure he looked impressed. Maybe even like he thought I was lookin’ real good, that day. I was genuinely too anxious to get caught up in that for once, though.

“We doin’ this?” I asked him, swallowing my nerves.

“Hux is worn down already.” I could tell by his face that meant that he’d been roughing the ginger up a little for me. 

“Good, I guess. I don’t really wanna torture him, to be honest.”

“I thought you might not,” he said. I raised an eyebrow. Was Kylo being accommodating? I’d fully expected him to push me into electrocuting Hux a little myself. To be fair, if that little shit pissed me off enough, I might end up doing it anyway. “You seem to have a talent for talking. More than I do. I thought that might be the best tactic to use. That, and your strength with the Force.”

“Ah.” _ Well, dang. I guess that’s fair. _

“Remember what he’s done, Aeon. Remember why he is here.” He looked seriously into my eyes, then, and I felt my heart stir a little. Like… he had a point. This fucker tried to murder me. Twice. I returned his gaze.

“Guess we better hop to it.”

“After you, apprentice.” He turned and held out an arm towards the door. _ Of course he wants me to go first. _ I took a deep breath, looking from him to the door, and walked forward. 

Hux was already giving this soft little snicker, by the time I was walking up behind the interrogation table where he was restrained in his t-shirt and uniform pants and boots, leaning upright and facing away from the door. Just the sound of it started to feed into the pool of anger that was inside me. I felt my footsteps get a little louder, a little stronger. My spine a little straighter. I strutted up around the table and into his view. He looked disheveled, and there were brown marks on his shirt where he’d been cow-prodded much the same way he’d done to me once. There were big dark circles under his eyes, and a tiny trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth.

“Ah, look who it is,” he said to me, sneer still on his face. “Come to visit me, have you?”

“You don’t look so hot, Lieutenant,” I remarked calmly, crossing my arms. Kylo stood behind him, eyes trained on me. For once it was easy not to look back. Seeing Hux strapped down and vulnerable was making me feel a lot more powerful.

“You, on the other hand, look excellent. Been sprucing up? Got a bit of shopping done? Wouldn’t want to make our Supreme Leader look bad, would we?” I did not feel motivated by his attempt to get under my skin to reply. I was doing my best Kylo impression. “Ah, yes. How the little pet likes to appease her master, to get into his bed and onto his throne--”

“I am not a _ her_,” I cut him off, striding up to the table and taking ahold of his face by the jaw and not gently. “I am not a _ him_. I am a _ they_. And to you, I am something much worse than that. You will call me Lord, or Imminent Apprentice.” Then, I remembered something Matt said, and I couldn’t help but smirk. “Or Your Radiance. Those are your choices, Armitage.” I let my fingernails bite into his skin before I jerked my hand away and took a step back from him. I’d never, EVER had that much fun correcting someone on my pronouns. He grimaced and shook his head around, glaring up at me through his eyebrows. 

“Someone sure has gotten comfortable,” he growled. 

“So, why did you and Phasma try to kill me _ and _ your Supreme Leader?” I asked him, conversationally. Using titles was way more fun with someone like Hux who coveted them so much. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not a very good liar, Hux. And considering what happened the last time I was in one of these rooms, this ain’t lookin’ real good for you.” He was silent, and he stared at the floor furiously. I let him hang like that for a minute. I was remembering how my therapist used to just let long silences happen, because it kind of built up the pressure to speak. It showed she was gonna wait as long as she needed to. I could almost feel Kylo getting impatient, but I just stood there half-smirking at Hux.

“Do you not think I learned my lesson the first time?” he muttered eventually, and moved his newly mechanical right hand inside its restraint.

“No, I really don’t,” I replied. He fell silent again. I waited less this time. “Hey boss, do we happen to have the recording from the incident on hand?” I asked Kylo, but my eyes never left Hux. Now, the ginger looked back at me, and I could tell he was surprised. And not pleasantly so. I saw his heart beating in a vein on his pale neck. 

Kylo, of course, said nothing as he walked around the table and held out a little disc to me, presumably so I could play it. I had no idea how to work one of those things, of course.

“Could you show it to the Lieutenant, please?” I asked him, trying to be polite but also trying to avoid looking like an idiot who didn’t know how to turn on a holo-emitter. He turned and obligingly pressed a button. A fuzzy image of Phasma appeared over it, and I heard the scene play out briefly.

_ You here to kill me? _

_ That’s a bit hostile, isn’t it? But yes. _

_ Hux in on this? _

_ We feel that the First Order could benefit from better management. _

Kylo paused it there, which I was grateful for, because I didn’t really want to get into the rest of that memory. Plus, that was all we needed-- and all she’d said regarding Hux, anyway. Kylo then stepped back away to the side, still watching this whole thing play out. I only watched Hux’s face fall. 

“You wanna lay out some of your ideas for better management, Armitage? Share with the class?” At that point, my anger felt cold and venomous. Maybe never more appropriately so, though, to be honest. “Maybe file some complaints with Human Resources?”

“You and I both know what the rest of the ship feels are Ren’s weaknesses as a leader, Imminent Apprentice,” the ginger replied, glancing up from the floor at me. 

“How’s that?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow. _ Is this motherfucker seriously trying to appeal to me now? Like, is he for real? _ I couldn’t stop a sardonic little smirk from touching the corner of my mouth. “Oh, and you can use his title, too.” 

“Not everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader’s more rash decisions. Perhaps Phasma felt the need to take this concern into her own hands.” 

“Vigilante justice, huh?” I was literally stifling a laugh. “Was that what y’all called it when you murdered your dad?” 

“My father was the victim of a truly horrific--”

“Oh, shut up.” _ I read the book, dumbass. _ Obviously it had occurred to me that the most likely explanation for why this whole thing had happened was that Hux wanted to take over the position of Supreme Leader, but now I kinda just wanted to get him to say it himself. 

“Please, my liege--”

“That wasn’t one of your options, Hux,” I reminded him. 

“Your Radiance,” he growled. I really did almost laugh, then. What had started as a fun joke was now literally occurring in all sincerity (well, in the sincerity of the fact that Hux really did not want to die, if nothing else) and it was kinda hilarious. 

“Good boy.” I crossed my arms again. “Now. To be perfectly honest, this is draggin’ ass. I haven’t had lunch yet. If that’s all you’re gonna give up, it might be time to decide what to do with you--”

“Please, my Lord!” He was starting to sound desperate. 

“On second thought, don’t call me Lord. I prefer Imminent Apprentice, or Your Radiance.”

“Imminent Apprentice,” he whined. “Have mercy on an innocent man!”

“Doesn’t the First Order teach it’s officers to withstand interrogation better than this?” I murmured, disappointed. 

“You cannot tell me you believe a petulant _ child _ is fit to rule the First Order!” he barked, and I raised my eyebrows at him.

“You know he’s like, right here, right? Like, he can hear you, my guy.”

“Why else would you be so determined to take his place?” Hux snarled. “Did he not name you heir apparent?”

“He’s the Supreme Leader, dipshit. He can do whatever he wants. Unlike his other subordinates, I don’t want to _ murder _ him, at least not today.” I held in a giggle at my little joke.

“The Resistance is--”

“Reduced to almost nobody, right? Like, from a military perspective. Sure, there’s a stray baby Jedi out there, but is that really your problem to solve, Hux? Are you sure you don’t just wanna sit in a really big chair and be king of the Galaxy?” I put my hands on my hips. 

“I want what is best for the First Order,” he said, glaring at me. Then, his gaze shifted to Kylo. _ Oh man, is he really gonna try that? _ “Supreme Leader, can you not see that this traitorous child is poised to overtake you? Her manipulations are--”

“I believe you’ve been instructed once by my apprentice to use the correct terms to refer to them,” Kylo growled, in his deep and predatory way. For a split second, I was taken aback. _ Did Kylo just… get my pronouns right? _ And _ correct someone else? _ I’d never heard him refer to me in third person before, of course, before that moment. And listen, y’all. It’s a big deal when that happens. I don’t expect it necessarily. People have to learn, have to figure it out in their own time, and I get that. They get it wrong. I don’t always have the energy to correct them. But when someone gets it right without my ever needing to correct them, much less corrects someone else… I’ll be honest, I felt more respected by him in that moment than I ever had. If I was the Grinch, my heart might’ve grown a whole size, or whatever. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux sniveled, no longer referring to me at all, it seemed. “Please, I beg you.”

“I like the way he sounds when he begs,” I said for Kylo’s benefit, still looking at the redhead, rubbing my bottom lip thoughtfully. “But, I don’t like the way he sounds when he calls either of us a child, so. I guess it evens out.”

“Apprentice,” Kylo began, turning towards me. The look in his eyes was positively feral, like he wanted to kill something and eat it, or maybe ravage me right there in the interrogation room, or possibly both. I felt my pelvic floor muscles tighten, and my heart rate start to pick up. “I have granted you judgement over this pitiful creature. He is yours to punish however you will.” 

“Hm,” I mused. There was still a part of me that wanted him dead, of course. There was a new part of me that wanted him to suffer. And there was still a part of me that wanted to play at being lawful good, and just lock him up and create some kind of punishment for him that didn’t involve either me or Kylo further degrading our morality scores. But right then, I wasn’t sure which part to listen to, and I was badly tempted to lean into the darker instincts I was having. So I decided to split the difference. “Let me think about it. I wanna be attentive, yanno? Really craft something... _ suitable _ for him.” I walked over towards Hux once more, and his lips were trembling, his expression pleading. I grabbed his jaw again, very harshly. He tried to twist his head away from my hand with no luck, and I dragged his face down towards me so I could stare into his eyes. Even more than before, I wanted that fucker to be scared absolutely _ shitless _ of me. “In the meantime, put him in confinement. Let him think about what he did, hm? Ponder his fate a little.” I left everything I said very vague, of course, because I wanted Hux to assume he was gonna die no matter what, regardless of what I actually decided. He more than deserved to be anxious about that for a little while. I felt the overwhelming urge to drive it home a little harder, to twist him up a little more, but I could tell I’d said enough. So I gave his cheek a condescending little slap, just for good measure, and stepped back again. 

“As you wish,” Kylo said, and I could feel his eyes on me. “I’ll have the guards escort him back to the brig.”

“Great.” I turned back around to meet his stare. “You hungry?” I asked, casual as you please, smirking at him a little. And then I walked out of the interrogation room, because I needed to be done fucking with Hux and was feeling fully emboldened by pretty much everything that had just happened. I heard Kylo’s steps behind me, and Hux started to yelp pleas of terror and desperation before the two guards entered the room and the door slid shut.

“Aeon,” came his voice from behind me, and I stopped in the now-empty passage, and turned around to look up at Kylo. My body was completely full of energy that was just dying to push itself out of me, the repressed desire to further do harm starting to mutate into a more familiar feeling. He was right there, incredibly close, eyes more alive with hunger than I’d ever seen them. The thing with Kylo is, it’s really hard to tell exactly what he wants, in those moments. His face is more comfortable with looking like he wants to kill you than any other expression, I think. He’d looked at me like that more than once before, in between threats and shouts. But this time it was fluctuating away from just that, like it had been inside the interrogation room.

“How’d I do, coach?” I smirked at him. I was really, really struggling to hear the desperate cries of the Voice of Reason somewhere in the back of my head, buried behind a bunch of adrenaline and dopamine and endo-amphetamines and all that brain shit that makes you act dick-dumb as hell.

“_Very _ well,” he purred. “I have to say, I was surprised that you--”

“Took charge? Yeah, me too. But I think I held back pretty well.”

“Held _ back_?” This really only made him look more… whatever he was.

“I held back, believe me.”

“And you still had him begging for his life,” he mused, and there was a dark little smirk on his face.

“If I didn’t know any better,” I murmured, leaning up closer to him, “I’d say you like how I act when you show me a little respect, Kylo.” Oh yeah. I was waaay not listening to the Voice of Reason. 

“Any master likes to see an apprentice come into their own,” he replied, but his look was ravenous as hell and he didn’t try to hide it.

“Admit it, big boy,” I purred back, holding his gaze. “You love it when I take charge.”

“Only because I love the thought of subduing you, little one,” he growled back at me, and I felt the fingertips of his leather glove run along my jaw from chin to ear, excruciatingly slowly. My mouth fell slightly open, and I silently sucked in a breath as my heart started pounding in my ears, and a few other places as well. _ Fuck. God DAMN him for being so hot. Buuuh. _ He was leaning down closer to me, and for a split second I swear his face was no longer blurring the lines between wanting to fight me and wanting the other thing. I felt my inner thigh muscles start to shiver a little, felt my hand start to reach up to touch him--

And then both our hands flew back down to our sides and we stepped much farther apart as the sound of boots rang down the hall. Around the corner came four more storm troopers. Hux’s escort. They nodded to Kylo, and then to me, as they walked past. I looked back at him, raised an eyebrow, and then turned to walk away. _ Christ, that was close. This is a bad place to make a bad decision. _

“When do you intend to pass judgement on Hux?” he asked me, tone much closer to professional as he fell in beside me. 

“I’m gonna let him squirm for a few days, I think.” I could feel Kylo’s frustration rise again, and I don’t mean frustration that I was taking my time with Hux.

“Do you need my advice?” 

“I know what your advice would be, sir.” I added the ‘sir’ because we were officially back in halls that were busy and in earshot of loads of people. But I still smirked at him.

“Fair enough,” he replied, smirking back. I wondered if he liked getting ‘sir’-ed. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know.”

“Your lessons should resume as soon as possible.” 

“Agreed.” We were drawing close to a lift I didn’t need to get on to get back to my room. I assumed Kylo planned to get into it and zoom off somewhere. 

“Come to the meditation room tomorrow morning, first thing.”

“Of course. And, sir?” I asked as he waited for the lift to arrive. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Yes?”

“When I, uh, need to talk to one of your _ people_,” I began, glancing around. There were people in the hall but they were rushing by, busy about their own duties, and kinda giving us a wide berth honestly. “Can I ask you when I’m with you, or would you prefer I kept on using the datapad to contact them?” I hoped he knew I was talking about Matt. By the look on his face, I was pretty sure he did. He also looked a little confused. 

“I cannot always reach them. The datapad is the best way to do so. Why do you ask?” 

“I’m just trying to be respectful, sir,” I said, a little pointedly. “Of your... wishes.” This was both true in general of the whole DID thing, and a veiled way of suggesting that maybe we needed to talk about said wishes more frankly. It might’ve been too subtle, honestly, but I wanted to plant the seed of that thought before the two of us were alone together again. He looked at me, and frankly he seemed slightly surprised. The word ‘respectful’, specifically, seemed to leave an impression.

“How gracious my apprentice has become,” he remarked as the lift door opened behind him and whoever was in it cleared out in a rush. Another faint, wolfish smirk touched his lips as he stepped backwards into the lift. My expression mirrored his almost involuntarily before the door shut, and I turned on my heel to rapidly walk back to my quarters. _ Christ. This is like what happened with Matt, only much worse. I feel dirty, almost. Not that that’s ever stopped me before… oof. I’m pretty sure this is NOT what Luke had in mind. _

I had way more convoluted emotions about Kylo than I did about Matt, and they were getting worse. Particularly if Kylo was starting to reciprocate them in ANY way, I really needed to sort that out, before I did something stupid. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this fun little one for y'all while i recuperate from Rise of Skywaker....
> 
> PLEASE do not spoil it in the comments for anyone who might be reading them!! as soon as spoilers start to creep into this fic, i'll tag them, but it's gonna take a minute.
> 
> i'm gonna be writing like a maniac this holiday season, y'all.


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt starts to hit the bases... :o

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is extremely MILD and extremely WHOLESOME smut in this chapter- just so you know!!

When Matt opened the door to my room later that night, I almost yanked him inside. 

“Oh, hello,” he stammered, a little surprised at my enthusiasm, but anything else he wanted to say I cut off quickly by claiming his mouth. I was standing on my tiptoes, hands on either side of his face, pulling him down towards me as I kissed him. All that fucking frustration from before was still trying to escape, and I guess Matt noticed because he pulled away from me.

“Are you alright?” he asked, readjusting his glasses so he could look at me properly. He still looked a little dazed, despite his concerned expression, and his cheeks were flushed. “You seem a little…”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I’m uh, I’ve just got a lot of… energy, today. I guess.”

“Didn’t you interrogate Hux today?”

“Yeah.”

“It went that well, huh?” He raised an eyebrow at me.

“It went fine,” I replied. “I mean, I scared him to death, but he’s in solitary until I decide what to do with him.”

“Were you wearing _ that? _” he asked, his eyes wandering over me. For the first time I think he was less than totally self-conscious about admiring my body. I looked down, and realized I was still in the same clothes I’d been wearing before (without the shoes of course.)

“Yeah.” I looked back at him. He was wearing a white tee and black pants and suspenders, just like he had been on the shuttle when we went planetside. _ Oof, that’s a good look. _ I guess we just looked at each other like that for a minute. “I was trying to look intimidating,” I added.

“You… well, you look… Maker,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. “You look incredible.” I felt myself blush a little, but also smirk. It felt really good to be admired by him. 

“Speak for yourself,” I purred, stepping up close to him again and putting my hands flat on his chest gently. This flustered him even more, and one of his hands covered one of mine while the other slipped down to my waist awkwardly. I smiled softly up at him.

“I feel underdressed,” he muttered.

“I like this look, specifically.”

“Really?”

“Maybe it’s the suspenders,” I giggled. He laughed. 

“Well, um.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say, so he just blushed at me, which I was of course totally fine with. 

“Come on, let’s get cozy,” I urged, and took his hand in both of mine and led him over to the couch. “We can snuggle, if you want.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. He decided to lounge longways on the couch and leaned back against one arm, and I settled half on top of him with my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his glorious arms around me, and I splayed my fingers out over his chest and felt his heart pounding beneath his ribs. 

“Is this comfy?” I asked. 

“Yeah, this is great,” he sighed contentedly. “Now, hang on. You said you still haven’t decided what to do with Hux?”

“No,” I groaned. “Kylo roughhoused him a little before I got there, but when I went in it was all talking.”

“Just talking?”

“I mean, yeah. I just scared him, and he’s fully convinced that he’s about to die and I’m simply deciding the way I wanna do it, pretty much.”

“How d’ya know that?”

“Because he was begging for his life.” It felt weird to say it out loud.

“Maker,” Matt said, blinking. “That’s… you really did scare him.” I couldn’t tell if he was spooked or into it.

“Yes, Kylo was very impressed,” I commented dryly. But at the same time, my heart started to thud a little. _ Very, very impressed. _

“I bet,” he murmured, grinning faintly. “Are you gonna have him executed?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I really don’t. I thought about just chuckin’ him into an escape pod and letting him rot on some backwater planet. I don’t know if that’s better. Or possibly demoting him to sanitation.” At this, the blonde giggled.

“As funny as it would be to see Hux in a sanitation uniform, I don’t think that’s quite proportionate to the crime of attempting to murder the Supreme Leader and his apprentice.”

“High treason, I know,” I chuckled back. “What about the other idea, though?”

“Well, he could find his way back. Unless you really went out of your way to make it impossibly difficult for him to do so, and maybe even then.” He chewed on his lip adorably. I was struggling to look away from his mouth, as it was right there near my eyes.

“Mm,” I noted.

“I guess you’ll have to figure it out, huh?” He was still gazing thoughtfully at the wall, like he was trying to decide what he would do in my situation. 

“Sure,” I murmured, and couldn’t help but tilt my head up to press my lips against the bottom of his chin. I felt him freeze and then shiver, so I kissed him again a little further back along his jaw. And a little further, and a little further...

“Oh, wow,” he whispered.

“We don’t have to talk about Hux anymore, do we?” I cooed as I kissed the skin just in front of his ear. He inhaled sharply. 

“No, no we don’t,” he replied, voice a little shaky. I kissed his neck softly, sweetly, relishing in every single tiny response. The arm that wasn’t behind me reached up to run fingers slowly and distractedly over my bare shoulder. I scooted up a little closer, and ran my own fingers over his chest.

“Cool,” I affirmed casually. He hand wandered up to my neck, where the collar of this particular vest was very, very high, reaching almost to my jawline. It had made me feel like royalty, to have such a high neck and long tails. Now it made me feel like it was in the way. His hand lingered over the zipper fastening. 

“Can I, um, you know,” he began.

“Make me a little more comfortable?”

“Um yeah, that.”

“Please do.” He wasted no time tugging that zipper down, though he didn’t pull it much past my collarbone, only slipped his fingers inside the parted fabric to touch the soft skin on my neck very gently. I couldn’t help but gasp a tiny bit, and this seemed to excite him.

“Oh, Aeon. I… I wanna touch you, but I don’t wanna… you know… make you uncomfortable.”

“I really can’t think of much you could do to make me uncomfortable right now, but if I do I’ll let you know what it is,” I assured him gently. “Touching me is _ not _ one.” I smiled at him, leaning back a little to look at his face. He was so precious, it was amazing. He swallowed nervously, but sat up a little straighter and tugged me a little closer, a little more onto his lap. 

To further indicate my comfort level, of course, I unzipped my vest a little more. Okay, a lot more. Halfway down, like right above my belly button. It was stiff enough that it held its shape, but open enough to be pretty suggestive. He looked fascinated, scared, and exhilarated all at once. I was feeling pretty fantastic, to be honest. Something about guiding him along was so easy, and so rewarding. Sure, I was riled up when he got here. But I wasn’t feeling impatient at all, now.

I dunno what I expected him to do, exactly. Probably something overtly lewd. But what he did was, he spread his hand out across my sternum, fingers wide as they slipped under the fabric, palm flat. Not very differently from how my hand had been on his chest earlier. Except his hand was _ enormous _, and covered so much of my upper chest I heard my heartbeat pick up. And it was directly against my skin, and it was so warm. Butterflies start to knock into the walls of my stomach, and I took a slow, deep breath, looking down at his hand and then up at his face. His heavy-lidded eyes were fixated on where his hand was, until they caught me looking at him. 

“Um,” he muttered, and turned a little pink, and smiled a little. _ Oh my God. Oh my God I think I’m gonna fall... Fuck. Oh fuck. Look at his face. Oh, this is… _

Ignoring the sudden buzzing of thoughts in my brain about a certain L-word, I gently slid my zipper the rest of the way down, holding his gaze as I did so. The vest fell open, but it was still tailored enough to cover me pretty well. His hand grew stiff on my chest, like he was afraid to move it, now.

“I want you to see,” I told him softly. His chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid breaths. Then, tentatively, he moved his hand to the side and pushed one side of my vest off, over my shoulder. His other hand gently peeled the other side off too, and slowly, like I was made of glass, he slipped it down my back. Before he pulled it all the way off, he stopped and stared. Like, not just stared, but drank in the sight, his eyes running all the way from my neck down my collarbone and around the curve of each of my shoulders, down across my chest, from one nipple to the other and down to my belly button. He really _ looked _ at me. 

I’m self-conscious about my chest, okay? For a lot of reasons, y’all can imagine. My perception of my chest is probably totally inaccurate from how literally everyone else sees it. And what I saw was not ideal to me, or what I wished was there. Like, I was a little nervous to just… get shirtless right there in the lamplight and let him see me. I figured he wasn’t gonna just yank my shirt off and start pawing me, yanno? Not Matt. He was so gentle, so new, so enthralled. I wondered a little if I was making a mistake, being his first… well, literally anything we did would be the first time for him. But, fuck it. I really was in it. 

“You are…” he started, and he shook his head a little as though he thought maybe he was dreaming. “You’re so beautiful, Aeon.”

I really never know what the fuck to say when people say this nice shit to me, about my body in particular. I felt my face get hot, and I looked away from him for a moment. 

“Thanks,” I mumbled, looking sheepishly back at him. He was smiling this strange smile, like he was surprised.

“Now who’s shy?” he teased me gently, as though he felt better that it wasn’t just him. I just smiled and rolled my eyes, and gently slid my arms the rest of the way out of the vest. His hands hovered for a moment, still uncertain if he should touch me. But this time it wasn’t like he was anxious about upsetting me, more like he just didn’t know where to start, or if he should sully what he saw by touching it. I took one of his hands and brought it to my face so I could kiss his palm, which made him smile. Then, I gently placed his hand on my chest under my collarbone. Watching his face closely, I slid that hand gently down a little further. He stared at his own hand and turned bright pink, of course, but I didn’t giggle at him like I wanted to. It wasn’t quite the right moment to do something like that, regardless of how adorable he was. His other hand landed on my waist, as though to steady himself. I took my hand off his, and felt like I was pushing a baby bird off the nest. _ Time to try it on your own. _

For a second, he was still as stiff as a board. But then he started to move his fingers, and grasp me very gently, and touch the soft skin over my sternum. When his thumb grazed my nipple, I gasped and my eyes slid shut as my nerves did a little dance. I knew he took notice of that, but instead of going right back there his fingertips traced beneath it along my ribs a little, his touch feather-light. Then he splayed his hand out again across my solar plexus, the opening of my ribcage above my belly button, and pressed gently there, warm and comforting. Tracing his steps in reverse on the other side, this time he was slightly more intentional about touching my nipple, and a little sound escaped my mouth. 

“Can I kiss you here?” he asked me in a low voice, fingers gently wandering still. It was so unfathomably sweet, that he asked me before he did anything. I mean, eventually I was gonna tell him to just have at it unless I told him not to, but right now everything he did made me feel enraptured by how gentle and sincere he was.

“Yes.” I shifted a leg around to the other side of him, so now I really was just sitting on his lap, but I did it so I could gently rise up onto my knees. He was way bigger than me, so having him lean all the way down to kiss me where he’d asked to seemed ridiculous. He made no protest, only kept his hands on my waist while I moved. He sucked in a breath, and gently leaned his head down to press his nose into my sternum.

“Maker,” he breathed, and his breath tickled my skin a little, and I smiled uncontrollably. His lips pressed into me, and then I felt my nerve endings start to sparkle. He moved my torso around a little, and very delicately, so he could move his head down far enough to kiss my belly button which made me giggle. I felt his smile against my flesh, and he kissed me all over my belly. I felt giddy with his adoration, struck totally dumb by it.

“Fuck,” I whispered involuntarily when he kissed a nipple, because it sent a jolt of lightning right down to my groin. He nuzzled that big, lovely nose into the skin nearby it, then brushed his lips up towards my collarbone. I was nearly dizzy at that point. Like, hello? Have you ever had someone just… touch you, like that? Everything was light pressure, attentive, fixed on my response. It was like being high as balls, without all the paranoia. One of his hands was splayed across my back, the other rested on my still-clothed hip. He made his way over to the other nipple, and I felt myself tense with anticipation. I couldn’t keep the little whimper from rising when he kissed this one a little longer, and I felt his hands grip me just a little harder when he heard it. He laved his tongue over it experimentally, and my eyelids fluttered shut while I inhaled again. He shrugged his head back into his shoulders sheepishly, as though he’d done something he shouldn’t have, and smiled up at me with flushed cheeks before pressing his nose into my chest again. _ Oh my GOD how are you SO PRECIOUS AND CUTE?_

“Thank you,” he murmured into my skin.

“What for?” I asked, running my fingers through his soft blonde hair.

“Letting me kiss you.”

“Christ, you’re so fuckin’ sweet,” I groaned.

“Does it feel nice?”

“It… it feels incredible.” To be worshipped, basically? Yeah, ‘nice’ was not even remotely the right word. Neither was ‘incredible,’ but it was a lot closer.

“Mkay.” He sounded inordinately pleased. I gently lowered myself to sit back on his lap, fingers still in his hair, looking into his eyes. They were glassy, pupils blown wide open, and they looked at me from unfathomable heights. I couldn’t imagine my first time fooling around with someone being this nice. I felt that in my guts, at that moment. That I was making sure Matt’s first experiences like these were gentle, and sweet, and respectful. 

“Thank you,” I whispered to him.

“What for?”

“For kissing me... like _ that_.” What do you mean, was I about to cry a little? Absolutely not. I very much held it together, thank you. 

“Anytime,” he breathed, leaning in to kiss my lips this time. It was a sweet, sensual, slowly unfolding kiss, as his always were it seemed. “How do you feel?” he asked when he finally tugged away.

“So good I struggle to describe it,” I replied honestly. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“I’m so in awe of you, my fierce little one,” he cooed, pressing our foreheads together, his hands wrapped around my waist beneath my ribs. If I wasn’t completely fucked up about him before, I more than was now. _ How can you just SAY something like that to me? _

“Oh, God,” I murmured. I really do not know how it’s possible to be that delirious with joy and arousal and tenderness all at the same time, and we hadn’t even REMOTELY approached sex yet. How can you…? I mean…? What? The fuck? Like, what was I gonna feel like whenever we finally got around to the full monty? Was I going to die instantly? “I wanna kiss you like that, too,” I told him.

“Um, okay,” he giggled nervously. “I mean…” He looked off to the side a little.

“Is that okay?” I asked, uncertain what the vibe I’d just caught meant.

“Well… this body… it doesn’t always feel like it’s really mine.” He seemed embarrassed. 

“Oh, wow. I uh, I know that feeling, actually.” Dysphoria is very real, y’all. And very weird.

“Really?” he asked, looking back at me.

“Yeah, really. That’s why I was shy, earlier,” I confessed. “But I wanted you to see me anyway. I knew you would appreciate me in ways I can’t, and… I dunno. Even when this body doesn't feel like mine, inhabiting it is a lot nicer when someone is being so… appreciative of it.”

“Wow.” He was smiling at me like I was the only thing that existed again. “I never thought of it that way.” 

“Well, if you decide it’s okay, I’d really like to be... appreciative, sometime.” I chuckled a little, and ran my hand over his back gently. 

“Okay,” he said in a near-whisper, turning pink. “That sounds… really nice.” I beamed at him. 

“Whenever you’re ready.” I nuzzled his chin with my nose.

“Can we, um. Can I…” He was struggling to choose the words. “I think it’d be nice if I could, um, feel your skin. On mine. Would that be okay?”

“Sounds lovely,” I cooed. “Can I help you with these?” I tugged on his shirt and suspenders gently.

“Um, yeah, thanks.” His blush had taken up permanent residence on his face for the time being, but he let me gently help him tug down his suspenders, and peel his shirt up over his head. Technically, I’d seen his torso before, when Kylo was out in the medical bay. But something about the way Matt slouched, the set of his shoulders being so soft, and maybe the way he glanced nervously at me… it was another reveal entirely. I didn’t let my fingers roam over him like they wanted to, only took both his hands in mine as I gently leaned forward and pressed my chest into his. Nestling my face into his neck above the collarbone gently, I could hear his breath rattle through him. Our bodies were warm, skin soft, and it really did feel amazing. I hate how much I forget these little things, how nice these touches and sensations actually are. 

“Mm,” I hummed happily, listening to his heartbeat slowly start to settle as I leaned onto him. He slipped his hands out of mine so he could spread them across my back, and I could feel his head tilting down to look at that part of me, too. 

“Oh,” he sighed, and his hands moved in slow and reverent curving lines. “This is really nice. You are…” He always seemed to struggle to find a word when he wanted to describe me, and it always made my cheeks warm. “Your shoulders are so strong. Your skin… you’re so lovely.” 

“You’re gonna make me blush,” I joked, as though I wasn’t already.

“Good,” he murmured. His face brushed closer, warm breath on my ear sending shivers down my spine. “Seems only fair.”

“It does,” I chuckled. I wrapped my hands around him and gave his back the same gentle strokes he was giving mine, and I could feel him shiver and loosen under those touches.

“Why does it feel so much nicer on the bare skin?” he asked, although he didn’t seem to expect me to have the answer.

“Probably all the nerve endings, making your skin so much more responsive when there’s nothing in the way.”

“Hm.” He didn’t seem like he was interested in doing a research paper on the subject, unless the research involved us continuing to touch each other. For a few moments we were silent, enjoying the electricity as it flowed through us in a loop. 

“Matt?” I asked him softly. I was enjoying myself immensely, but I was starting to want to take initiative in helping him express himself.

“Yeah?” He sounded drowsy and blissful.

“Would you like us to go any further, like with touching one another, today? Or is this a good stopping place?” I’d expected him to tense at this question, just because he always tensed when he got nervous, but he didn’t.

“Um, well. I think… I think I’d like to stop here, tonight. I’m so happy right now, I just don’t wanna ruin it with a big dose of anxiety,” he replied carefully. He nuzzled my ear again and I sighed.

“Okay.” I was fine with it, to be honest. I mean, of course I desperately wanted to do more, but it didn’t have to be right now. And I wouldn’t ever want to do it if Matt wasn’t ready, anyway. For a while we just laid there, breathing in unison, warm and content. We didn’t even talk. It was soothing, to he held that way. For both of us, probably, but definitely for me.

“What time is it?” Matt murmured eventually, and I realized he’d almost fallen asleep. I couldn’t sleep, but I was much happier to be awake and consciously reveling in the sensation of our bodies pressed together. I giggled a little, and turned my head to find the clock.

“Almost midnight,” I sighed. “You gotta go soon?” 

“You have training tomorrow, first thing, remember?”

“Oh yeah, that.” I felt my shoulders tighten at the prospect of trying to talk to Kylo alone in the meditation room about His Feelings™ about me, or whatever I was trying to talk about. I just wasn’t okay with ending up in some kind of sexually compromising position with him before I felt like I understood the difference between my relationships with each of them, you know? Then, I realized with a twist in my gut that if I ever did end up in such a place, I’d have to tell Matt. Kylo never seemed all that bothered that I had a full blown crush on his alter, in fact he had seemed almost _ supportive _ of it, but I didn’t know how Matt felt about me being so… upsettingly attracted to Kylo. I mean, to be fair he never seemed upset that we’d kissed that one time. He’d mostly poked fun at me for acting like such a dingus, which was entirely fair. 

“That means I should probably head out.” It was his turn to sigh. “But I do _ not _ want to.” 

“It’s okay. Being responsible is a good idea.” I hate it, but it’s true.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I looked up at him, still pressed as close as I could be, and brought a hand up to run it through his hair. He gazed down at me with the softest little smile on his face. “Kiss me before I go?” he asked sheepishly. _ Um, him asking me to kiss him… is really attractive actually. Maybe just ‘cuz he’s learning to ask for what he wants, and knowing what he wants… _ I shifted enough to oblige his request, starting slowly. He tugged on my lower lip a little, and then I started to get hot all over again because he was now playing the things he’d learned back to me. Expressing not only his desire, this time, but his attention to those details. Slowly, I guess, he was starting to figure out how to navigate that gorgeous body of his.

“Ugh. You can’t keep kissing me like that or I’ll never get up,” I complained when I pulled our mouths apart. He giggled. 

“Okay, fair. I would never want you to get up, so. The odds aren’t in our favor.” I left a few kisses over his collarbone just because I could, and he let out a little noise of delight.

“In that case, I’m getting up now,” I laughed, and with no small amount of effort I did so. As he sat back full upright, I handed him his discarded t-shirt, letting my eyes take one last venture across his torso.

“Thanks,” he said, tugging it on and pulling his suspenders up. I put my vest back on but didn’t bother to zip it, as I was only gonna need it when the door opened anyway. I tugged him up off the couch by the hand, and he bent down to kiss me again.

“Okay,” I muttered, breaking the kiss long before it was ready to be broken. “Gotta do the thing.” 

“Fine,” he chuckled, as though I’d convinced him all over again. His fingers trailed from my neck down the slip of skin between the panels of the vest, all the way to my belly button. _ Fuck. _“Goodnight, fierce one. I’ll see you again soon.” 

“Goodnight, Matt,” I murmured in reply, slightly out of breath from his gentle but thus far most assertive touch and how brief it was. He then touched my cheek with his hand before he walked over to my door. As it opened, he turned around and waved. I just smiled like a drunken fool after him until the door shut, and sighed mightily. Then I turned back towards my bed to settle into the fog of giddy reminiscing, like ya do after something that magical happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter gave me a lot of emotions to write because it's so fluffy and beautiful. at this juncture, all smut with Matt literally no matter how explicit it gets is looking like it's gonna be really wholesome. T-T
> 
> as i promised to tag and leave a note at the top for RoS spoilers in the future, i'll do the same for smut. i'd like to point out that i prefer to write smut that has hella feels (whatever the feels happen to be) and it's always part of character and relationship development, and not pure smut... pretty much ever. in case that's an issue for any of y'all. and i don't see this fic containing any dub-con or fringing into problematic territory like that. that's for another fic lol.
> 
> thank you, once and forever, to everyone who reads, give kudos, etc. y'all make my fuckin' day with your comments!!


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to Build a Lightsaber 2: Feelings Boogaloo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick content warning for discussion of a past abusive relationship and involuntary hospitalization. nothing crazy graphic at all, but it's there.

I was actually early to the meditation room, sifting through the pieces of lightsaber parts that were still there right where I’d left them. I hadn’t slept much, despite lying in bed valiantly. I kept replaying my evening with Matt over and over, hoping to burn it into my brain. He was so unbelievably tender…

“Good morning, Aeon,” came Kylo’s voice, deep and very even, pulling me out of my reverie.

“Good morning, Kylo,” I replied dreamily. “This is a nice planet we’re above, today.” Out the window was a gorgeous planet that was a swirl of blue and teal-green clouds. 

“You’re in a good mood,” he noted, raising an eyebrow at me. “And you’re _ early_. Should I be concerned?” 

“No,” I murmured, trying not to blush. I guess he didn’t know what me and Matt were up to lately, after all. “Just, you know. Been feeling better.”

“I see.” He sat down on the other meditation pillow, and watched me pick up a random piece of metal and eye it.

“What’s the deal today, coach?” I asked him, starting to remember slowly that he and I needed to have some conversations that I was not entirely sure would go well. I wasn’t sure they would go poorly either, but. 

“I want to talk to you about the Force, and about what happened on Dagoba.”

“Okay, go for it.” 

“I know you said you were feeling… protective, when you killed Phasma.” That phrase made me shift uncomfortably. 

“Yeah.”

“Her move was an overconfident one, though I suppose it wouldn’t have been if you were as weak as she thought you were. Did you move into the blow instinctively, or did you feel the Force guiding you?” He was looking at me with the most calm and curious expression I’d ever seen on his face. I thought back to the moment, uncertain. 

“I think… both? I mean, my instinct when someone comes swinging at me that hard would normally be to run as fast as possible in literally any other direction. But it felt really automatic, to move, like, under her swing, I guess. I feel like that had to be the Force helping me out.” 

“That was my thought, also,” Kylo affirmed, nodding. “Did you feel its presence the entire time you were on the planet?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t always… I dunno,” I began, drumming my fingers on the floor while I tried to describe it. “It got strong at very specific times.” 

“What about while you were at the cave site?” he asked, his eyes gleaming a little. _ Okay, thinking about that is almost worse than thinking about murdering Phasma. _ I inhaled slowly, then exhaled even more slowly. 

“That was frightening.”

“It usually is.”

“It was very personal.”

“Also usual.”

“I did not enjoy it.”

“Aeon, will you describe what happened? I know from when my master took me that my assumptions about what you saw can be wrong.” He was looking earnest, and only a little bit annoyed. I met his gaze, suddenly swamped with trepidation. _ Do I want to talk to Kylo about my ex? Or my parents? I definitely don’t want to talk to him about Luke. That’ll just piss him off. I don’t wanna lie, though. I guess it’s time to try out some healthy boundaries. Oof. _

“Um,” I replied, taking another deep breath. “I… I don’t want to describe all of it. Some of it was… I’m still sitting with it.” I waited for him to be angry about that.

“Alright,” he said, holding back any frustration he felt and nodding. _ Okay… no anger. This is good. _

“I saw a lot of people from my past. Including my parents.” I saw his eyes glimmer with something more than recognition. I’d figured he’d seen his parents when he was down there, too, and this made me feel sure of it. “I also saw you, and Matt, and Ben. And the demon that I always see on you, but it was separate this time. Everyone was telling me that I don’t belong here, and this isn’t my story.” Kylo was silent, listening, a flicker of confusion moving across his face. “I… there was a guy I dated once. He… well. He abused me, manipulated me. He would use my mistakes against me, and make me think I was crazy, and yell at me. I saw him down there, too. He told me I had to pick, if I wanted to be here or I wanted to go home. Just like he always used to make ultimatums like that.” I must’ve been visibly rattled, because Kylo held up one of his gloved hands a little.

“It’s… take your time,” he murmured, trying to be reassuring or maybe comforting. He wasn’t good at it, but at that moment I did appreciate the effort. I felt very far away from my body, flashes of half-remembered nights with my ex playing in my brain. I took a couple deep breaths, closing my eyes, spreading my hands out on the floor to remind myself where I was. _ He can’t hurt you anymore. _

“I… well, I attacked him. Which I never did when we were together. Except once.” I opened my eyes again and looked at Kylo. He was watching me very closely, his expression exceptionally not-scowling. 

“Really, just the once?” he asked, grinning slightly like he was trying to joke around. I would have laughed, given his experiences with me, but as you can imagine I wasn’t in much of a state to dive into the humor.

“Yeah. It was the last time we saw each other, of course.” My heart thudded in my ears, and I could remember glass breaking, red wine on the kitchen tiles, the first and only time his hand struck me in the face. The blinding rage-- and fear-- that finally took over when he did. The sound of sirens coming up to the apartment building, and a paramedic’s huge arms crushing me until I stopped thrashing. “He had me committed. Said I was violently psychotic, hallucinating, dangerous.” I felt a humorless smile crack over my face. “Nevermind that he was the one who broke our stuff, or that his emotional abuse was what made me break down finally. But nobody asked me.” 

“Committed?” Kylo asked, brow knit.

“I was taken by the authorities, against my will, to a medical facility where they took away all my stuff including my clothes, sedated me heavily, and kept watch on me in a hospital ward for three months. Until I seemed capable of returning to polite society, or at least to my parent’s house. All because I finally fought back.” I felt my limbs trembling a little, but I felt… strangely proud of myself, for being honest with Kylo about this. Kylo, who had _ only _ non-consensually choked me the _ one _ time (dark humor is a coping mechanism, y’all), when he still wasn’t sure how serious of a threat I was. And had been trying, bless his heart, to get his act together since then. “That was the longest they kept me for an involuntary commitment. The other ones were shorter, because I hadn’t been accused of trying to hurt anyone but myself.”

“I see,” he replied, unusually subdued. His was face unreadable. “What happened when you attacked him at the cave site?”

“He turned into someone else, and I let him go,” I murmured, remembering Matt’s shocked expression. “Then Ben came up to me, and asked me… well, he said he needed my help. That I didn’t have to fix anything, but I needed to help him. By being… what I am.” I pressed my hand to my heart, feeling it beat beneath the fabric of my shirt, pressing my kyber crystal against it.

Kylo was silent, and I felt his gaze finally drift away from me, lost in his own thoughts. Whatever he had been expecting, this wasn’t it. To be fair, I hadn’t been expecting it either. I sat there, remembering the strange feeling of the aftermath of that little therapy session with the Force. Finally he looked back towards me, and I met his gaze. His eyes were unguarded, the mix of emotions inside them difficult to define.

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, Aeon,” he said. “Your power comes from strange places. It seems like you have much of both the light and the dark in you.”

“I reckon everybody does,” I mused. I pulled my necklace out from under my shirt, and sure enough the crystal was purple, and bright. “Even if they habitually fall back on one or the other.” I looked back at him, trying not to be too pointed. _ Even you, punk. Now stop being a dick, so your uncle doesn’t get mad at me for fucking this up. _

“Mm,” was all he said in reply. I realized suddenly that this was the most even, reasonable, and generally polite conversation me and Kylo had ever had.

“Thank you for respecting my choice not to get into all of it,” I told him. Positive reinforcement, right?

“Thank you for sharing what you did,” he replied. _ Wow, okay? I guess me getting all personal on the Supreme Dingus in ways he never bothers to get with me really struck a chord, there. _ “I suggest you meditate on the experience. The quiet can bring... interesting clarity.” He said it as though the quiet had brought him some interesting clarity of his own, recently.

“I will.” For once, I fully intended to do what was advised. I was feeling a lot weirder about being dropped into the Star Wars universe than I had so far. “I think I’m gonna need your help with this thing, though,” I added, picking up another hunk of lightsaber from the tray of bits and bobs, grinning at him. “Really over my head.”

For the first time, I saw Kylo fucking Ren actually smile. It was a little bit smirk, a little bit grin, and a little bit conspiratorial. There was something fierce about it, but this time it was like I was in on the plan. I liked it immediately.

“Of course, my apprentice.”

We spent a couple hours going through the pieces that were there, and Kylo explained each part of the light saber to me and its function. We laid out a few hypothetical assemblies on the floor of the meditation room, so I could diagram the way the thing was supposed to go together in my mind. Kylo was fully engaged, didn’t get annoyed even once. Probably because I didn’t antagonize him, which was mainly because I was… well, I was finally _ really _ interested. And, I had no idea what I was doing, so I paid attention. I guess I did finally want at least one thing he could teach me. 

By lunch time, we were sitting side by side, looking at the most recent array of parts I’d laid out which, when assembled, would ostensibly yield a light saber. I was looking at it closely, trying to decide what it was that I didn’t quite like about it. I didn’t realize that Kylo had gone from looking at it to looking at me until his particular brand of silent intensity had built up enough to interrupt my little moment of hyperfocus. I froze a little under that sensation, unwilling to look up at his face, suddenly nervous. I think he knew that I was stuck in some way, though, because he broke the quiet first.

“What do you think?” he asked. I kept my eyes on the parts on the floor.

“I guess… I dunno. It’s just not… Maybe I’m not a good enough fighter, yet. I’m not sure if it needs to be longer, or what. I wanna be able to move it quickly, and I want it to feel good in my hand.” Somewhere in the back of my brain, a twelve year old was giggling and making a dirty joke about that last bit.

“Mm,” Kylo rumbled, still watching me intently. “Do you want to hold mine?” I blinked, still not turning to look at him, surprised. The twelve year old laughed even harder in my head. _Shut up, brain. _

“Um, sure,” I murmured. I heard Kylo pull his saber hilt off his belt and hold it out to me, and I looked up at it but pointedly not at his face. I was anxious, once again, about Talking About Feelings™. I could sense whatever it was that he was feeling-- his interest, at least-- and my logic-brain was like _ Okay, this means it’s about time to have that conversation, you know the one. _ But my throat closed up, and my mind went blank (except for the fuckin’ twelve-year old back there unhelpfully cracking off inappropriate jokes, of course.) I took the heavy metal object, remembering how it felt in my hand the last time I’d held it. When I was swinging its blade through Phasma’s torso. _ Oof. _

It might’ve been a comforting weight if not for that memory. But just physically, it felt nice. Good to hold, though a little too clunky to wield maybe. My hands were much smaller than Kylo’s. I spun it around experimentally, moved my wrist while I gripped it. 

“Hm. Mine should be slimmer than this one. It’s so big, I don’t know if I could handle it. But it’s sturdy, and I do like the weight,” I said finally, when his relentless stare never left me and he asked no other question of his own.

“I like the way it looks in your hand,” he replied, voice like velvet. “It matches your strength. I think you can handle something bigger than you think.” _ Gee, I wonder what unconscious influence could possibly be causing me to think of dick jokes at a time like this, _ I thought ruefully.

“I assume that’s a compliment,” I replied, turning a little towards him, the tiniest smirk on my face as I spun it around again. “So thank you.” 

“You’re very welcome.” Finally, as I offered the saber back to him, I looked up and met Kylo’s eyes. They were exactly as smoldering and black as I’d expected, and I felt my inner thighs clench. _ Fuck_. His gloved hand reached out, and wrapped around mine on the hilt. _ Shit. I gotta say something. _

“Did Matt let you know about, uh, us?” I asked suddenly, breathlessly. His expression changed, brow quirked.

“Yes,” he replied evenly. “I told you he wouldn’t make the first move.”

“Yeah, thanks for the, uh, support,” I murmured. “I just… thought you should know. That we should be able to talk about it, if we ever needed to.”

“Do we need to? Matt’s an adult. I assume I can trust the two of you to keep this appropriately private.”

“Of course, I mean. Neither of us wants to make your job harder than it already is,” I reassured him quickly. “But, um, it’s not… well. Being able to talk about feelings is important and I figured that since Matt’s your alter, you know…”

“Aeon, I’ve told you already that I’m not jealous of Matt,” he said flatly.

“Not _ that_. You can have other feelings aside from anger and jealousy, or so you’ve led me to believe.” At this he eyed me, and I realized his hand was still over mine as he tugged the saber hilt back towards himself gently, pulling me with it. 

“I suppose so.”

“Just trying to be sure you know you can share them.”

“What about you, little one?” he purred, face looming closer. “Do you have feelings to share?”

“I asked you first,” I pointed out, feeling my face get hot. _ Fuck, why does he always call me that in the exact moment that I need to NOT be getting more turned on? _

“You did,” was all he said in reply. This appeared to have no bearing on who should actually share first, in his opinion. 

“I have mixed feelings,” I murmured.

“Why’s that?” 

“Listen,” I piped up suddenly. “Aside from the fact that you piss me off all the time, and even aside from the fact that you’ve been trying to play nice lately, and aside from just my… responses… to you in general--” here, I swallowed hard-- “I think there’s a reason we agreed not to talk about what happened on karaoke night ever again, Kylo.”

“What was that reason again? I don’t believe we discussed it explicitly.”

“You’re Supreme Leader of the First Order.” 

“As you informed Hux so recently, that means I can do as I please,” he pointed out in a low voice that rumbled straight down to my nethers.

“You’re also my master--”

“_Master_,” he echoed in his predacious coo. “I like the way that sounds in your voice.”

“Stop it,” I groaned. _ Dammit, I’m so full of Freudian slips around him! _

“Stop what?”

“Making me wanna argue with you.”

“You don’t like to call me master?”

“No,” I replied bluntly, looking at him through my eyebrows. “But we’ve done so well today. You’ve been a good teacher, and I’ve been a good student. Can we have one single interaction where we don’t fight, please? I’d really like that.” 

At this, his expression changed, but not to anger. He seemed… thoughtful, almost, looking down at me with those same strangely unguarded eyes he had before. He slipped his hand further up the shaft of the saber hilt, releasing mine, and put it back on his belt, leaning back away from me. 

“Alright,” he said finally. “I won’t push you.”

“Really?” I was… kinda shocked.

“Yes. Look, I’m not pushing, see?” 

“Wow. Watching me fuck with Hux really did change things, huh? You scared of me now?” I smirked, teasing him a little. 

“No.” It was his turn to reply bluntly. _ Maybe this moment of generosity is not a good time to test him, _ the Voice of Reason reminded me.

“I know, I’m just joking,” I said. “I get it. You’ll never be scared of me.”

“I could say the same thing about you, little one.” Now, he was smirking a little. Part of me wanted to ask him to stop calling me that. The rest of my parts never wanted him to stop calling me that. My heart thudded.

“Yes, I’m famous for giving you half a dozen reasons to kill me every day, I hear.”

“And yet I only need one.” 

“Your graciousness is appreciated,” I replied, grinning despite myself. He only kept smirking. I liked this particular smirk a lot. We were sharing sarcastic humor, I was not feeling hunted as either an educational or a sexual conquest, and we’d even managed to kinda discuss some feelings, maybe. _ What the fuck is going on? _ Lowkey, him watching me interrogate Hux really had changed something. Or possibly hearing more about my past than he’d expected to. Maybe that just made him feel more comfortable showing what changes were already taking place for him. _ Maybe I’ll be less attracted to him if he starts being civil, _ I thought. But that was a goofy thing to think, and somewhere in my guts I knew it. “Is there anything else you planned for us to work on today?” I asked him finally. 

“I thought we might take the afternoon down in the training hall to work on Form 3,” he said. 

“Well, just lemme eat something first and I’m down. Though, if we can make _ not _ fighting today a goal and keep that in mind…”

“Of course,” he replied, and even though I could see his energy being restrained behind the shield of his eyes, he sounded very calm and certain. We both stood from our pillows, and I gave a last glance down to the planet below. _ Never gets old. _

“Alright, shall we have lunch?” I asked him, and it felt strange to realize that I would be okay with spending what would normally be a break time with him. At least, for today.

“Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GO KYLO GO!!!! look at him almost acting like a real person. i could weep, i am so proud. also lmao @ all the dick jokes, i couldn't help it, i'm here to have fun xD
> 
> hope y'all are having a happy holiday time, and if you're not, i hope it's over soon or gets better fast or both. it's a weird time of year for a lot of us, so i'm sending support out to everyone who needs it. take care of yourselves!


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt goes exploring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is smut in this chapter! it is pretty fluffy. just fyi :)

I was spinning my waster around in my room when Matt rang. I opened the door and smiled at him, his floppy blonde hair and glasses always such a welcome sight. 

“I think we’re falling into a routine, here,” I suggested as he came in. He beamed at me.

“That’s okay, right?”

“It’s great,” I assured him. 

“I think so too,” he said, and then his eyes did their wandering thing. “Are you practicing swordplay in that dress?” I laughed.

“Why not?” I went through a quick movement that was somewhere in the middle of one of the routines, giggling. I was wearing the dark red dress he’d gotten me ages ago, because it was soft and comfortable, honestly.

“Good question, I guess,” he muttered, blushing, pulling his gray uniform coat off. He was in the same getup as last time. 

“Are you wearing that because I told you I liked it?” I prodded him playfully in return.

“Maybe,” he replied, blush deepening. I slid up to him, smile very sly, hooking a finger around each of the suspenders.

“You can wear whatever you want, you know,” I reminded him. “You look great pretty much no matter what.”

“I don’t know how to dress this body,” he confessed. “But I wanted to look… well I wanted you to like it.” His big hands came up around my bare shoulders, thumbs stroking my skin.

“I like _ you _, so. Wear a burlap sack, for all I care.”

“Maybe I’ll try that, sometime.”

“Okay.” I grinned. “Easier to take off, anyway.” He laughed, pulled off his glasses, and leaned down to kiss me. This time he finally seemed comfortable doing it, even though he still started out slow. It seemed more about how much he relished the sensations than about his nerves. His lips were so soft and pillowy it made me sigh into his mouth. He was trying out all the things I’d done to him again, tugging on my bottom lip with his teeth very gingerly and running his tongue along it. I did nothing to suppress all the sounds this elicited from me, because I figured he benefited from the positive feedback. I put one hand on his cheek, then ran it back through his hair, and felt heat starting to build in my belly real fast.

“I should ask you about your day,” he murmured into my mouth.

“Why?”

“Seems more polite.”

“Mm.” But I took his lips back, not especially concerned with politeness at all. I slipped my tongue into his mouth a little, and snaked the tip of it around his, and opened my mouth more as though to suggest that he might take similar liberties. When his tongue ran in a line down the center of mine, I moaned and shuddered. His hands were on my hips now, mine around his neck, but I was standing on my tiptoes and he was bent over oddly to compensate for the massive height difference between us.

“We should… sit, or something,” he said finally, pulling away a little.

“Mm,” I said again, a little hypnotized.

“Where to?”

“Are you asking because you’re interested in lying on the bed instead of sitting on the couch?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. He blushed.

“Maybe.”

“We can lie on the bed, then,” I cooed, grinning. He grinned too, and without warning he put a hand on my back and another behind my knees, scooping me up into his arms and striding over through the sitting area and to the bed. I giggled with delight, because he’d apparently realized how much I enjoyed it when he carried me around. It was something fun and different for me. He laid me gently down on the bed, and began stepping out of his shoes and pulling off his socks. 

“So how _ was _ your day?” he asked, giving a sheepish grin.

“Busy. Morning in the meditation room, lunch with Kylo, afternoon in the training hall.”

“You spent all day with him? And nothing is… broken?” He raised his eyebrows.

“I know, right? I mean, we almost argued a couple times. But I asked him if we could have one day where we didn’t fight, and he agreed. So we both worked on it.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.” He sat down on the bed, and I clambered up immediately to sit on his lap, one leg on either side of his torso, skin revealed by the splits up each side of the dress. He turned bright pink, but his hands laced behind my waist and rested on the small of my back.

“We might be learning to get along.” I ran fingers underneath his suspender straps again. “You know where I can get a pair of these for myself?”

“Commissary,” he replied in a low voice. “They… would look really good on you.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Then again, so would a burlap sack, I guess.”

“Sounds like we have our dress code for next time,” I giggled. 

“Mm.” He pressed his nose into my cheek, ran his lips along the scar there. “You don’t mind that I’m taking this slow, do you?” 

“Not at all,” I said, shivering as his breath blew hot past my ear. “It’s kinda nice.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. People forget not to be in a rush a lot, I think.” I ran a fingertip from his shoulder to his neck along his collarbone, over the white fabric of his shirt. Then I fiddled with the collar. “Just let me know when I can take my time getting you out of this, of course.” 

“You… you could do that now,” he suggested. My grin got huge. 

“Okay.” I ran my fingers under his suspenders again, from the bottom all the way to his shoulders, and then I tugged them ever so slowly off and down his arms. He pulled his hands through and let the straps puddle at his sides on the bed. Then I ran my fingers around the hem of his trousers, watching his chest rise and fall gently with his breath. When my hands were around at his back, I slipped my fingers beneath his pants and found the hem of the tee. Pulling it gently free, I slipped one hand beneath and touched his soft skin. He inhaled deeply, and I heard his heart start to beat a little harder. I ran my hand around his body, and that motion pulled the shirt the rest of the way out of its tuck. Slipping the other hand beneath it too, I rested them for a moment on his lower abdominals. _ Christ, I can feel those muscles. Oof. _

I peeled the shirt up slowly, peeked beneath it at the skin I slowly revealed. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, running my hands all over him. He breathed hard, watching my face. When I reached his chest, he lifted his arms up and allowed me to tug his shirt the rest of the way off. I couldn’t help but sigh loudly at the sight his torso, his shoulders, his neck. The way they looked when he had the body was so different from Kylo-- like the muscles were more relaxed, and his posture was much softer, shoulders less aggressively squared. Beneath my hands his skin was supple, soft, milky and flecked with dark moles.

“God you’re so fucking pretty,” I mumbled almost to myself. He turned bright red.

“Maker…” 

“Tell me if there’s any way I touch you that you don’t like, alright?” I said softly.

“I will,” he sighed. I looked at his sweet face for a moment, reaching up to run my finger along the bottom of his jaw. He gave me a little smile, slightly nervous but clearly also excited. I let my hands wander lazily over his trapezius muscles, down his sternum, across the broad expanse of his chest. I let my fingertips graze his nipple, and he gave a little gasp. 

“You like that?” I asked breathily.

“Yes,” he whispered, and I felt myself sparkle with anticipation as my hands drifted back down, snaked around his waist, touched the muscles along his lower spine. I trailed them back to the cuts of the deep V in his lower abdomen, stopping just before they vanished beneath his trousers. Just _ seeing _ them made my entire lower body tighten. I reached up to the other nipple and rubbed circles around its peak, really softly. Beneath me his body tensed up, but not with anxiety.

“That’s not too much, is it?” I asked.

“Maker, no,” he breathed. “Not too much at all.”

“Does that mean you’d like more?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yes, please,” he replied, voice extremely quiet and shaky and full of desire. _ He said please! God he’s so cute. _ His breath hitched a little when I pinched that nipple gently, and his hands squeezed my hips a little tighter. _ Check! _ I bent my head down to kiss his collarbone, lips leaving a wet trail until they closed around his other nipple. He shuddered, and gasped a little. _ Check again! _ The feeling of his enormous, glorious, powerful body starting to tremble beneath me was fucking amazing. The idea that he’d never experienced sensations like this before, that I was giving him an entire buffet of new feelings to remember, filled me with joy. How did I get this lucky, again?

“You’re so lovely,” I murmured into his neck before I began to kiss him there, rubbing his shoulders and biceps for a moment. He let out a little noise as I sucked on his skin-- gently. I wasn’t trying to leave a mark. Kylo would probably lose his shit, if I did. Can you imagine?

“You, ah, you make me f-feel lovely,” he stammered, distracted a little by me rubbing my fingertips over both his nipples at the same time. He leaned backwards, bracing himself with his hands on the bed. His eyes were heavy-lidded and glassy with the sheer sensory overwhelm, looking down at me, staring as I traced fingers along the bottom opening of his ribs. 

“Good,” I said. I worked my way back up to his face in another pathway of kisses, and nibbled his lower lip gently. “Would you like to lie down more comfortably?” 

“Uh, sure,” he murmured, and I clamped my legs around him as he slid back to pull the rest of his body onto the bed. We pointed sideways across it, but that bed was big enough it hardly mattered. He laid flat beneath me as I perched on his hips, and his hands rested on my legs just above my knees, right below the splits in the dress. My skin sparkled under them.

“You can touch me, if you want,” I told him as I gazed down at the sculpture that was his upper body. _ How strong yet soft it seems. He doesn’t even seem real, except when he’s too real to be anything else. _

“Oh, on your legs?” he asked, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that this was on the table. 

“Anywhere you want, really.” I chuckled.

“O-okay.” He seemed a little uncertain, but his thumbs were gently massaging my legs where they rested. I watched him as he started to stroke my quads, over the fabric at first. _ He’s so sweet and nervous, I just wanna tell him over and over again that he can do whatever he wants to me. But he probably wouldn’t know what he wanted yet anyway. _ I decided to help him out a little by bunching the maroon fabric of my dress up in my hands, tugging it a little further up my legs, showing a little more skin. I lifted myself up a little to pull the rest of the skirt out from beneath me. It bunched up on his trousers and belly, a soft pile of fabric in front of the part of me I was frankly the most curious for him to explore, if he wanted to. His hands splayed out, stretching fingertips up all the way to the bend at my hips, so warm against my skin. I felt myself get a wave of goosebumps.

“Mm,” I hummed happily, closing my eyes. I laid my hands over his, pushing a little to encourage his touch. His thumbs slipped down to my inner thighs, right in the middle of my abductor muscles, and began to knead there gently. I shuddered with delight, my legs going a little limp while their apex got a little tighter. “Wow, that’s nice.”

“Yeah?” he asked, sounding excited, and his kneading strokes got longer, starting from closer to my knee and pushing upwards. I gasped, and smiled at him coyly. He was watching his hands, then my face, then his hands again, like he was recording my response to every touch. His palms slid up, and his thumbs were perilously close to my nethers as they massaged my inner thigh muscles gently. _ Christ alive, I just want him to touch me SO BAD! _

“Matt, I didn’t know you were such a tease,” I joked even as I squirmed a little.

“I think I’m just nervous,” he said, giving me an awkward smile.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

“Everything you’re doing is great,” I reassured him. “Phenomenal, even. I’ll let you know if it’s not, mkay?” He nodded.

“Yeah, okay. Can I, uh, how close, um, I mean…”

“You can touch me there,” I whispered. His thumbs were now in the extremely soft crease of my innermost thighs, beneath the fabric of my dress. They kneaded that sensitive flesh gently. I gasped, eyelids fluttering, and sighed. With one hand his fingers moved to run through the little tuft of hair between my legs. My heartbeat picked up significantly at that moment as his fingers began to explore carefully. They traced the edge of those lower lips, and grazed my clit, which made me jerk a little. _ Fuck! _ I looked down at Matt only to see that he was looking up at me, since he was unable to see what he was doing with his hands under the maroon fabric, and staring transfixed as I responded to his touch. I met his eyes, sucking in a breath through my mouth. He grazed my clit again, and everything inside me clenched. My skin felt like it was being electrocuted gently, waves of lust washing over me.

“Oh, wow,” he breathed as he started to rub that sensitive place so, so gently, and I started to shudder as the sensations mounted. Before I knew it I was bucking my hips a little, trying to increase the rhythm and pressure, three fucking years of deprivation dancing through my belly. “Am, am I-- is this alright?”

“God, yes,” I whimpered. He was still staring at me, and with each escalating sound of pleasure I made he seemed more and more exhilarated, eyes going black with desire even as he watched with the attentive nervousness of a student observing a science experiment. 

“How does it feel?”

“_So _ good, Matt.” _ You have no idea, _ I thought.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and I felt something inside me twist around, get really excited that he was turned on enough to be swearing. _ Precious Mattau, getting just a little bit dirty! _“Aeon, I wanna see. Can I look, please?”

“Of course, since you asked so nicely,” I teased, smiling. I drew the fabric of my dress back up into my hands, slowly tugging it away from my crotch. His touches stopped as he froze. I tossed the front of the skirt behind me, now sitting with my legs spread on top of him and leaning back a little. The hand that was still clamped onto my thigh moved in closer, and I felt him release a long, slow exhale. For a second I got self-conscious as he just stared, but then his other thumb ran down over my (admittedly, very wet) opening. I cursed under my breath, muscles tightening again, my hips bucking forward involuntarily. I tried to slow my breathing, but I was missing his touches _ real _ bad.

“You are so incredibly beautiful,” he breathed. That made me blush hard, because I had no idea what to do with such a wonderful comment at such an intimate moment, to be honest. His eyes were trained on my cunt, watching me contract as he finally rubbed his thumb over my clit again once, agonizingly slowly, the sensation jolting through me. Then he did it _ again_, just as slowly. It was less methodically slow and more like an observation, like he was recording data about what pleased me, so he took his time. It was still driving me fucking nuts. I whimpered pitifully.

“Matt, please.” He looked up at my face, which I’m pretty sure was all types of slack with desire. “Please keep touching me.”

“Oh,” he said, and I felt the nervousness enter his fingers again. “Can I…”

“Yes.” I was desperate not to lose momentum, so I didn’t care what he did. He looked back down. Slowly, carefully, he slid a finger around until it slipped inside me. The sheer delicious agony of that feeling, missed for SO fucking long, caused my body to shudder from somewhere very deep within. 

“Is that too much?”

“No, more, please more!” I was so wet that I was soaking into his trousers. He drew the one finger out, then slid two back in. “Yes,” I breathed, eyelids fluttering. “Oh, God, yes. Turn your hand around, like this.” I showed him how to hold his hand while going about the task he was embarking on. “Perfect. You’re a natural.” He blushed when I said that, which was incredibly endearing. “Now, curl your fingers like this.” 

When he did, and they pressed up into that special place, I think he felt me clamp down around his hand. He certainly saw my eyes roll back a little, and my limbs shudder. His mouth fell open in awe. He moved his fingers curiously, and I writhed completely involuntarily. _ Fuck! _ I placed a hand on his other hand, moving it a little, encouraging him to rub my clit just as he had been. He got the idea very quickly. My thigh muscles started shaking uncontrollably, and I let out a string of incoherent sounds.

“Holy shit, Aeon,” he murmured, and I could feel his body beginning to respond where a certain hardness was developing under where I sat. I ground into his hand instinctively, and against his arousal, too. He made a little tiny noise, almost a whimper. _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fu _

“Don’t stop,” I whispered to him between gasps of air. “I’m so close. Just like that, don’t stop!”

“Maker,” he breathed. He was looking between my face and his hands again, extremely focused.

“Oh _ God_,” I moaned, picking up the pace of my hips just a little, gripping his hand harder, everything inside me wound so tightly and desperate to release. I arched my back, pushing myself forward into his hands. _ Three fucking years… _ “I-- I’m--”

But it hit right then and cut me off. My hips stuttered, mouth falling wide open, my whole body jerking and then going still as I pushed my orgasm out. 

“Fuck!” Matt said softly, trying to work his fingers despite how hard I clamped down around them. Then I started to shake, sinking back down onto him and gripping his hand for dear life. He sat up immediately, pulling his hands away in favor of wrapping his arms around me. I sagged into him, and he laid back down on the bed and took me along with him. I felt his hands rubbing my back gently, which filled me with sparkles. 

“Holy shit,” I sighed into his chest, cheek pressed against him. I realized I was sweating, but I was too blissed out to care. “‘S been a while.”

“You alright?” he asked.

“I’m great,” I affirmed, giving a thumbs-up. He chuckled.

“You look wonderful.” That made me laugh.

“Oh, good.” I laid there against him, catching my breath. “You alright?”

“I’m fantastic!” He sounded so fucking cheerful that I laughed again.

“Good, I’m so glad.”

“You’re a wonder,” he said, nuzzling his nose against my forehead. “I could watch you do that forever.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?” I grinned.

“Both,” he replied, and my heart skipped a beat. _ Wow! Okay then, shy guy! _

“Well, fuck.” He just chuckled at this. We laid there for a moment while my panting slowed, and then I got an idea. “Give me your hand,” I instructed him gently, already pulling the arm of the one I wanted. As he offered it to me, I could smell my own slickness on his fingers still, sharp and sweet. Methodically, I looked up at his face while I took the two digits all the way into my mouth and licked myself off of them. Under me his body tensed, and his eyes widened in surprise which quickly fell away into startled arousal.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, and honestly I was absolutely delighted at how profoundly I’d just aroused him. The sheer newness of everything I did was so clearly mind-blowing to him-- mind-blowingly hot. Y’all can’t imagine being watched like that. It’s ridiculous. I pulled his fingers out of my mouth one at a time, slowly. His breathing was heavy, mouth slightly agape. “That’s so… _ dirty_,” he added, as though shocked in the best possible way. I gave a devilish grin.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, babe.” 

“Maker, if I see anything else I’ll explode.”

“That’s the idea,” I cooed, kissing his fingers before I released them from my grip. “You can taste me yourself whenever you want.”

“Oooh,” he moaned softly, shivering, touching my face. “Oh, fuck. Just thinking about that is… I admit I’m nervous, but _ fuck_, Aeon.” He squirmed a little, almost comically. “I’m so full of whatever this feeling is right now!”

“I think it’s called lust,” I offered, smirking.

“Maker,” was all he said in reply. I giggled.

“Do you want me to touch you, or would you rather not?” At this he went still.

“Um, maybe not right now. I’m… it feels weird, still. I’m still kinda worried about it.” He didn’t have to look downwards towards his crotch for me to know what he meant, but he did anyway. 

“That’s okay!” I said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Don’t you worry ‘bout it.”

“Thanks,” he sighed. “I should maybe… get to know this body a little better on my own time.”

“You can do it here with me too, you know. If you want.”

“You want to watch me figure out how to masturbate?” That made me laugh and kinda turned me on at the same time.

“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I’d, I think I’d like that a whole lot, actually,” I mused, picturing it in my head a little, feeling a pang of my own lust. I know I just got off, but damn.

“Oh, uh, okay,” Matt said, seeming equal parts embarrassed and into it.

“No pressure, of course,” I added absently. I was still imagining things…

“I’ll let you know.” He seemed to be mulling it over.

“Mmmm.” I wasn’t preoccupied.

“Aeon?”

“Yes?”

“Can I feel your skin on mine again? That was really nice, last time.” I beamed at him.

“Okay.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you’re just wearing the dress…”

“It’s fine,” I reassured him, sitting upright again with my legs still around him. “Just help me outta this thing.” He nodded, and reached up to help me as I tugged the soft red fabric off. I threw it behind me onto the floor, and turned back around to him. He was looking up at me with wide eyes, since I was now naked on top of him, and I felt my cheeks burn. 

“You’re unreal,” he sighed, his hands running up my thighs and then coming up to my belly before slipping around and gripping both sides of my waist. My heart fluttered and banged into its flimsy cage of ribs. 

“Speak for yourself,” I murmured, staring down at his torso again. _ Jesus. Just LOOK at him. _ I spread my hands out over his torso, running them up slowly as I leaned down to lay on him, skin to skin. It was, in fact, really nice. I felt warm and tingly all over, wrapped up in his arms. Again we stole a few moments of quiet, just pressed against each other. Then I felt him giggle. “What?” I asked, turning my head towards his on his chest.

“I dunno,” he replied dreamily. “I’m just so happy.” _ Oh. Well, fuck, just go on being adorable then. _ I blushed, and buried my face in the crook of his neck.

“I’m happy too,” I whispered. _ Shit. I really am happy. I mean, I know there’s a lot of chemicals involved, but. I think I haven’t been this happy since I woke up on this ship the first time. _Our date on Kaller being a close second, of course. 

“Good.” His nose nuzzled the fuzz on my head, arms tightening around me even more. We laid there for a while, real quiet, full of that inexplicable joy-- you know the one. But then it was getting late, and I knew it, and I wanted to be sure not to give Kylo an unrested body in the morning. Not because I like him, or anything. Just because I had to put up with his shit if he was tired. Obviously. What?

“You should go to bed,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” Matt sighed. “I wish I could sleep here with you.”

“Maybe I can come to your place sometime,” I suggested, grinning. 

“Maybe! I’ll have to make sure it’s okay with Kylo.”

“Don’t ask me why, but I think he might be okay with it.” _ No really, don’t ask, _ I thought. “Your suite is real isolated, I hear.”

“True,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll ask him anyway. Leave him a note.”

“Y’all communicate via notes?”

“Sometimes, on the datapad. When we need to. We haven’t much needed to in a long time, till now.” He giggled. My heart felt like it was gonna explode.

“That’s cute.” I sat up slowly, really reluctant to peel my skin away from his. “Let me move, I’ve got you trapped.” 

“Wait,” he said, blushing. “Can I look at you one more time?” 

“Um, sure.” My face got hot. I sat there and tried not to look at him, half-smiling awkwardly. His hands reached up to take both of mine.

“Thank you,” was all he said before he sat up and leaned down over me, rubbing our foreheads together before his lips landed on mine for a final, drawn-out kiss. I was almost faint with how fucking SWEET he was. When we finally pulled away, I climbed off him and rolled over onto the bed. He stood, looked down at me again for a moment, then pulled his tee back on and slid his suspenders back up. 

“God you’re hot,” I reminded him, gazing up at him and his bashful smile.

“Um,” he said. I just smiled.

“Sleep well, Matt.” 

“You too, fierce little thing. See you soon?”

“Sounds good.”

“Mkay.” He beamed, and then shuffled over to pull on his shoes and grab his coat and glasses. “Goodnight, Aeon.”

“Goodnight.” As he vanished on the other side of the metal door, I just laid on the bed and felt my heart sing. Somewhere in the back of my head, a thought crept in that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I got stuck here, after all. But I ignored it, mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay writing any smut with Matt makes me emotional so there's that. more Kylo up next!! also i changed the rating bc i figured it was appropriate.
> 
> love you guys so so much <3


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Real Talk with Mitaka!

“Ducky, you look positively radiant,” Mitaka said as I sidled up to him at the bar inside the Cockpit. The redheaded bartender wasn’t working that night, and I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or relieved. The lieutenant had agreed to reinforce my sobriety until we found another watering hole that was less potentially problematic. Wouldn’t want to ruin Kylo’s almost-a-decent-human-being streak with a little too much fun, would we? I’m not bitter. “What’ve you gotten up to?” he asked, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. 

“Oh, you know,” I smiled. “Not a lot, today. Long day with Kylo yesterday, today he has a lot of people to meet with apparently. I’m just well-rested.”

“Ah,” he said, but he didn’t look convinced. “I ordered you a fizzy, by the way. Virgin, of course.”

“Thank you Duffy,” I told him sincerely. “What about you, how you doin’?”

“Oh, I’m tolerable I suppose. I tried to dump my hanger-on the other night.”

“How’d that go?”

“We slept together,” he lamented, looking at the ceiling. “Maker help me.”

“Aw, Duff. That ain’t the way to go about it.”

“Yes, I know. But…” He sighed. 

“It’s not like I don’t know that feel, though,” I said. “I’ve been there before. But gettin’ all tied up with someone who sucks just over the sex…” _ Is definitely not what I’m trying to avoid with Kylo right now, _ I thought. _Nope._

“Yes, highly inadvisable. But I did it anyway.” He stirred his drink absently. “I guess I’d better try again, sometime.”

“Might be a good idea.” I leaned my elbow on the table. “Sex can really complicate things.” 

“It always seems to,” he grumbled. 

“I mean, you ever had one of those things where you kinda wanna kill someone, but you might also kinda wanna fuck them?” I asked, hoping that he might not immediately know who I was talking about. But fuck, man. I HAD to talk about this Kylo shit with SOMEONE. It was lurking in the back of my head all the damn time unless I was hanging out with Matt, and sometimes even then. I was finally starting to feel like I was learning something from him, too. Which complicated the matter. 

“Yes,” he replied, side-eyeing me hard. “Yes, I have. I try to avoid my… superior officers, though.” He totally knew. Of course he knew. I had known my hope was foolish, but clung to it anyway. RIP. “Don’t shit where you eat, ducky.” 

“Listen,” I said defensively. “I haven’t _ done _ anything, okay? And frankly, things are getting better. There is less of the urge to explode lately. There have also been some pro-active attempts to not explode, recently. From both parties!”

“How nice,” he replied unenthusiastically. “You think that’ll stay long, though?”

“I have no idea.” _ God I fuckin’ hope so, though. For everyone’s sake. _

“That’s sort of the trouble, ducky. Aside from the issue of rank, which is only slightly less important than it would normally be, you and I both know that hatefucking doesn’t yield good relationships no matter how hard we try.” He was looking at me like a concerned mother, now. I groaned.

“Okay, but like… what if this person does improve? And it’s no longer hatefucking, just regular ol’ fucking?” 

“Whatever happened to your technician?” he replied pointedly. “The one who actually treated you well? You remember him?”

“Oh,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t updated him yet about that. “I uh, I talked to him finally.” The sly grin that crept over Mitaka’s face was its own reward, honestly.

“Oho, did you? And is _ that _ why you look so rosy this evening, you naughty thing?”

“Shh,” I hissed playfully at him. “Really though, please keep it on the DL.”

“On the what?”

“The down low. Like, keep the volume down. As in do not fuckin’ tell anybody, please.”

“Oooh,” he said, nodding slowly. “But I don’t even know who he is!”

“You know what I mean, Duffy.” I frowned seriously at him.

“I do, I do. I won’t share,” he agreed, waving me off. “You don’t have to get all spooky on me.”

“I’m spooky?”

“Have you seen yourself give someone one of those looks before?”

“Uh… no.” 

“You’ve quite the rattling stare on you. Really I think if you were next to your master, you’d make him look even more frightening if you were making that face.” He raised his eyebrows at me, sipping his drink.

“I prefer to call him my teacher,” I said flatly.

“Teacher, then. Speaking of you frightening people, I hear Hux is in the brig counting his days,” he said. I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah. I’ma let him rot down there awhile.”

“Are you going to have him executed?”

“Haven’t decided.”

“What other options do you have, though?”

“I could leave him in the brig,” I pointed out. “Or dump him on some nowhere planet with three days of rations and let him figure himself out.” _ Because fuck that guy. _

“If you keep him, the Order has to feed him. We don’t budget for prisoners,” he pointed out. “If you leave him somewhere, he could make his way back.”

“That had occurred to me. I could brand him, make sure people who see him know who he is. Then again, I guess that means he could get help from sympathizers.” I pondered this more thoughtfully than I had gotten around to, so far, in my avoidance. _ Damn, this is hard. Punishing people is hard. Like is dumping him someplace really any more ethical than killing him if he just dies out there? Slowly, of starvation? _ “What the fuck am I gonna do with him if I don’t let Kylo cut his head off?”

“Have you considered simply letting that happen?” he asked me, tone dry once again.

“I have this fear, you might find shockingly reasonable, that Kylo’s gonna want me to kill him myself.”

“And you don’t want to do that?”

“I still haven’t talked much about my first murder, Duff. I didn't have time to think this much before that one happened, either.” 

“You mentioned,” he said. “But this is the First Order, ducky. People die here quite often, and traitors of Hux’s extremity are perhaps the people who deserve it the most.” I didn't have it in me to try to explain to him that I wasn't a fascist, and even though killing Hux technically counted as killing a fascist which is technically not the worst thing I could do for everyone's overall wellbeing, my desire to not be politically aligned with the First Order was serious. Plus, the issue of leaning towards the dark side of the Force never left my mind. 

“I don’t wanna pretend that I ever know who deserves to die and who doesn’t.” I looked at him, and I think my concern showed on my face because he softened. “I don’t think it’s fair for me to make that call.”

“Well, it _ is _ self-defense as much as Phasma was,” he pointed out, but not harshly. “Hux is nothing if not tenacious. He’s also cunning, unscrupulous, and obsessive. If you leave him somewhere, his only goal will be to find you again and finish what he started. I promise you that.” I shifted uncomfortably on my stool and sighed. 

“I believe you,” I muttered. “Thank you for saying so, though.”

“Of course.” He sighed. “And, whether you like it or not, you have to make that call sooner or later. That’s the position you’re in. I know it’s tough, but it’s not something you can wish away.”

“Fuck.” I knew, of course, that he was right. But hearing it out loud just made me that much more aware that I needed to cut my avoidance bullshit out. 

“I don’t know if I can help you any more than I have, though. That’s the logic I’d employ in your position. You’re quite welcome not to do it, though,” he said.

“Don’t worry, dude. I only ever take the advice I wanna take.” I grinned humorlessly at him. “About the sex problem too, honestly. Though your points regarding both issues makes a lotta sense, tragically.” _ At least fucking Kylo might be an enjoyable moral degeneration. Ugh. _

“The only reason I advise against the sex issue is because I don’t want to see you get hurt, ducky,” he said simply. “And it seems all too possible, even with your rather more cheerful account than usual of the body in question.” I smiled a little. _ Well… that’s really nice. _

“Thank you.”

“Plus, isn’t that a conflict of interest with your technician?”

“Not really,” I said, shrugging. “We’re not exclusive.” _ That’s one way to put it, anyway. _

“Would the… other party take issue with him, then?” He eyed me. I snorted. Kylo would take issue with anyone that wasn’t his alter, probably. Luckily for me…

“For once, I don’t think they would.” Mitaka’s eyebrows nearly climbed off his forehead.

“Really?” He was very plainly unconvinced.

“Really, really. I know it sounds bizarre. But I’m not kidding.” 

“Well, I still think you should avoid anyone too... possessive.” 

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Damn. That was _ very _ fair. I’d been there once, though Kylo’s breed of possessiveness was unlike the one I was familiar with in some ways. “Thanks again for throwing out some reasonable points. It’s hard to think like that sometimes, with my brain doing all the shit it does. And our bodies just…” I shook my hands, trying to think of what to say. But my mouth just managed to make some sort of burbling sound. Mitaka laughed. “It’s just like! Arrgh! It’s fucking maddening.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” he giggled. “It’s not that way with the technician, though?”

“Oh, it is. But not with the anger, he’s way too sweet for that. He’s just… I think he’s got some anxieties of his own, that run a lot deeper than we’ve really gotten to talk about yet.” Honestly, I thought I had Matt’s discomfort with his body pretty much figured out, but I was not at liberty to explain it of course. “We’re going slower than I’m used to, which is kinda nice, actually.”

“Clearly you’re not dissatisfied,” he pointed out, grinning impishly.

“Not at all,” I sighed a little dreamily. 

“Ah, we can be such fools, can’t we?” He sighed too, putting his elbows on the bar and his head in his hands. “But it’s nice, sometimes.”

“Sometimes.” My brain was abuzz, but the thoughts were all fighting each other for articulation and so they just kinda stayed a nebulous blob of concern, desire, confusion, and possibly hope. I sipped my fizzpop, lost in the sauce for a minute. But I was happy to have a friend with me there, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said more Kylo was coming, and it is, but i wanted to throw this lil chapter over to y'all real quick because i miss Duffy!! he's such a good friend tbh. at some point, his role might start to get bigger, i like him so much. but for now, have this moment of grounding from our favorite gay bestie.
> 
> and, hang out for Kylo next!!! and and, stay amazing. bc y'all are amazing.


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren needs a hug, and so do I.

I was still sweaty after a morning in the training hall with Kylo, but he wanted to switch to the meditation room after lunch. We now had a full day and a half of teaching without any arguments under our belts, though he’d avoided sparring with me during that time. Maybe wisely, but I kinda wished we could do it. I missed the… adrenaline. Yeah. That’s what it was.

I know I said he was acting different after my little scene with Hux. But really, maybe it was after what had happened on Dagoba. Between me killing Phasma with Mary-Sue levels of ease and hearing that little bit of my past connected with what had gone down in the not-cave, I think maybe he was starting to see me as more of a whole person just the same way I was seeing him as one. In the training hall he seemed more inclined to focus on the lesson of the day. But in the meditation room where we were truly alone, I felt like he had a tendency to push a little, so I was slightly nervous about backtracking in our progress. You know, testing my fuckin’ resolve to NOT have sex or fight with him, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long I would last resisting. But Mitaka’s words were floating around in my head, and I had a feeling they’d back up the Voice of Reason if they needed to. 

“Today I want to try something we haven’t tried yet,” he said to me, his voice still very businesslike as we sat down. We were over yet another desert planet, a rust-colored orb beneath us outside the window. I was looking at it while he spoke, absorbed in the details of the scrapes and craters in its surface.

“Hm?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s cute, you know. How much you like looking out the window like that.”

“What?” I looked over at him, shaken from my little reverie. _ Did he just...? _

“I said it’s cute how much you like looking out the window.” He was smirking a little now, the corner of his mouth turned up, but his energy wasn’t aggressive. It was like he was making a simple observation. Which happened to involve calling me cute. I blushed involuntarily.

“Oh,” I replied, glancing back out said window and then back at him. “Um…”

“Would you like to make the planet the point of focus for a meditation?” he asked. 

“Uh, sure.” _ Wow, that was kind of a smooth move, actually. _

“Go ahead and sit facing the window.” I shuffled around on my pillow, looking out the glass barrier, feeling a slight chill on the front of my body. Kylo didn’t move, only continued to sit facing me. “I’ll guide you. This meditation is for opening up your connection to the Force intentionally, which I think you should practice trying to do more. The Force comes to you often, but you should be able to call it as well.”

“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was rattled by him being nice to me, and I didn’t want to start an argument about how apparently when I was depressed enough the Force didn’t work. I could probably shout at it all fucking day and it wouldn’t work. But I wasn’t depressed, so there was no way to prove my point. A point that was rooted in insecurity, anyway, let's be real.

“I want you to focus on the planet. Observe it closely, notice its details.” As I sat there following his instruction, I was acutely aware that Kylo was observing me very closely. _ Then again, he kinda has to, doesn’t he? _ My eyes wandered over the scrapes in the planet’s surface again, the deep trenches and pockmarks of red rock and sand. This planet had no ice caps, was just a spinning ball of clay in the silent void of space, stars splattered behind it.

“Now,” he said after a ponderous pause. “Close your eyes.” 

I shut them. 

“Breathe.”

My chest rose and fell slowly as I drew in a deep breath and released it even more slowly. I felt my perpetually tense shoulders drop a little. 

“Good. Now, picture the planet in your mind, based on the details you just observed.”

The planet swam before my mind’s eye, a vague impression.

“Try to see it as vividly as you could with your eyes open.”

Slowly, as I kept breathing, the details of the ragged surface of it began to piece themselves into the image, the position of each of its geographic features slowly settling into their rightful spots. It was kinda weird, just how many details were starting to appear there. _ My memory isn’t this good. _

“Do you feel your connection to it? Through the Force?”

As if speaking it had suddenly made it obvious, I could tell that the feeling I had and the detail that was appearing in my mind were both the Force at work. It was so subtle, sometimes, that I couldn’t tell. The image of the planet, of what it looked like at least, was flowing towards me of its own volition and painting itself again in my mind.

“Yes,” I said quietly. I could feel the nearly imperceptible shift of the planet’s axis, the achingly slow spin of it. 

“Perfect. Now, dig into that feeling. Really sit in it.”

For a while, I dunno know how long because at that point time had stopped being clear to me, I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into whatever that feeling was. Once I ran out of details to observe about its surface, I let it tug me down gently towards it. The air was thin, the wind was cold, and burying below the sand helped a little. But then I hit solid rock, and had to push myself through much harder to get past it. The deeper I dove, the warmer it seemed. I wanted to float in the comforting heat of the molten core at the heart of it.

“You can draw that energy back out, into you.” 

With his words I remembered myself, and my breath. I inhaled like I was trying to get a whiff of the planet’s cologne. I know that’s a weird metaphor, but it’s accurate. I felt a rush of energy from down below when I tugged it back towards myself. Then, I sank towards the surface again. Then, I rose back into myself. _ A strange heartbeat, _ I thought. 

“I feel it,” I breathed, starting to feel exhilarated. 

“Yes,” Kylo urged. “That’s it. This is yours to command, Aeon. This energy can move you through anything.”

“It--” But before I could speak again, I heard an incredible sound. Huge, terrifying, totally fascinating. It sounded like the whirr of an enormous engine, played over a hundred growling lions. I went rigid, my slow breaths caught in my throat. 

“Aeon?” came his voice, concerned, so distant I could barely hear it. My eyes were clamped shut, fear starting to pulse through me. I plummeted down towards the surface of the planet, and I think I screamed-- I definitely tried to. Just as I thought I was surely gonna land on red clay and get turned into hamburger, my mind’s eye went dark. My body was cold, unbelievably cold, and I could barely breathe.

** _Who are you? _ ** The voice was terrible, and I knew it instantly. Horror struck me as I realized that Palpatine’s voice was now directed at… _ me _. 

I made no answer, frozen in no-place.

** _Speak, _ **the voice commanded. My head started to scream with pain. But I felt absolute, profound conviction that the moment I spoke, everything was over. The whole ordeal was fucked. Luke’s plan would be foiled by the Emperor, and I’d be trapped here forever and probably not in a very good version of the universe.

** _You resist. _ ** The observation was flat, tinged with annoyance and curiosity. ** _Nevermind. You will come to me, and then we shall see._ **

I landed flat on my back on the floor of the meditation room, all the breath knocked out of my body and shaking with how viscerally cold I was. Kylo was rushing over, bending down beside me. 

“Aeon! What happened?” he asked, his face more full of shock than I’d ever seen it.

“Palpatine,” I gasped, sucking in air. He knelt on the floor close to me, a gloved hand reaching out to touch my cheek. His pillow was in his other hand.

“Just breathe,” he advised, brow furrowed with extraordinary concern.

“Too cold,” I gasped again, my hands and feet shuddering violently. Without missing a beat, he shifted and laid down right next to me, slipping the pillow under my head, wrapping his huge body around me as he shifted me onto my side. I curled up instinctively, he curled up with me, and he was so warm that it hurt to touch him. But I was too weak to pull away. I almost didn’t care though, I knew I just needed to wait it out because all the parts of me that were still achingly cold where we weren't touching directly were screaming for help. I pulled the chill leather glove off the hand that was wrapped over me, and when the warmth of his skin touched my fingers it was searing and overwhelming. He wrapped that hand around both of mine as they shook. I could feel his breath behind me on my neck, and it was also incredibly warm. I let out a shuddering groan as my body slowly and uncomfortably started to come back to temperature, breath finally filling my lungs and spreading through me. Kylo was silent, acting as a human heat blanket.

“Fuck,” I said finally, quietly, as what had just happened sank in.

“You okay?” he asked in his quiet, deep voice. The tone was less saccharine than Matt’s, but it was still plainly worried.

“Think so.” 

“What happened?”

“I heard him. Palpatine. Heard him before. But this time he was talking to me.” I felt my heartbeat pick up. For all my bitching about lazy writing, I was actually horrified at the idea of having to deal with him, now that I was here in fucking space against my will. _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

“What… did he say?” Kylo sounded doubtful, maybe concerned, maybe afraid.

“He asked me who I was.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.” He was silent at my response, and I could feel the wheels turning in his head for a moment.

“You’ve heard him before?”

“Only once, during a seizure. He said _ your coming together will be your undoing. _ I don’t know who he was talking to or about, that time. But this time...” I shuddered again at the godawful memory of his voice. It was like he was the entire Force, and his terrible scraping growl came from everywhere at once, when I heard it. “He… he knows I’m here. I don’t think he did, before.”

“I’m sorry,” muttered Kylo. 

“What for?”

“For trying a lesson that opened you up to that.” 

“It’s not your fault,” I pointed out. He was silent. “You couldn’t have known. I should’ve told you about the other time I heard him, I’m sorry. I meant to.”

“It’s okay.” His voice was flat, distracted. He was thinking really fuckin’ hard about something. I couldn’t see his face, so I didn’t know what exactly.

“Did you feel it, too?” I asked.

“No. He found you… but I couldn’t feel him.” _ Oh, that’s probably what he’s stressing out about. _

“The entire Old Republic Senate and the old Jedi Council didn’t feel him either,” I pointed out.

“Hm.” He seemed only barely comforted by this. _ Ugh, let it go, Supreme Dingus. Be grateful you didn’t get a Force phone call from Sheev fucking Palpatine. You don’t need that shit, you have enough on your plate. Ugh, my head hurts. _ I fell quiet again, but I pushed a little harder back into Kylo’s massive, incredibly warm body. Partly for warmth, but partly because I was actually extremely rattled and it was honestly comforting that he was there. Part of my brain was like _ Um, hello? Kylo is snuggling you to warm you up right now? And not coming onto you at all? What is going on? This is really nice of him?? _But I elected to ignore it for the moment. My toes still felt frozen.

When his arms grew a little tighter around me, and his huge hand gripped mine a little more, and I felt his nose press into the back of my neck, though, I couldn't ignore it anymore.

“Um, Kylo?” I asked tentatively, heart starting to pound.

“Matt is pushing me. He wants to hold you.” His tone wasn’t half as flat as I’d expected, for all that he was admitting that apparently Matt was active and worried about me.

“Thanks for helping him out, then,” I murmured. I wanted to ask him if _ he _ wanted to hold me, too, just because he was so goddamn opaque about everything except his clear desire to fuck me into submission. And I guess to protect me, too, though he certainly showed it in a funny way. “I’m starting to get warmer, finally.”

“Did he hurt you?” 

“No, just froze me half to death and dropped me on the floor. My head’s gonna have a goose-egg on it in the morning.” I think he decided to ignore the weird Earth-thing I’d just said, because he just sighed.

“Okay. We’re glad that’s all it was. You went floating up into the air, and it sounded like you were in pain,” he said. 

“It hurt when he had me, but it doesn’t hurt like that now.” At that he just curled around me even tighter, and there was something almost urgent about it. I blushed, totally confused and slightly flustered. I was starting to feel like I could really tell when Matt and Kylo switched, like the energy in the room was just so dramatically different. Even if Matt was co-piloting, I knew Kylo was still the pilot of their body right now. Despite my jittery heartbeat, my muscles were starting to sag from finally warming up.

“Matt’s gone quiet now. Think he’s satisfied that I took care of you,” Kylo said softly.

“You did. Thank you.” 

“Anything for my apprentice.” I blushed harder.

“Oh really? That’s awful nice of you,” I said, and for once I wasn’t poking fun at him or trying to goad him into reacting. 

“I took you on. Your well-being is my responsibility. So far, I feel I’ve done a terrible job of protecting you.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. My parents said the same shit. But I’m not an easy person to protect. I tend to bulldoze my way into and out of situations.”

“So I’ve noticed,” he chuckled softly. I could hear the little smirk creep into his voice. I rolled my eyes, grinning despite myself. “Matt’s right. You’re a fierce little thing.”

“He told you he calls me that?” I was flushed all over again. Hearing Kylo, King of Desperate Dom Moods add that one word-- _ fierce _\-- into his usual diminutive pet name for me… I liked it when both of them said it, even though it sounded so different coming from each of them. 

“He called you that in a note he left. Are you two having nice evenings together?” Now there was a real smirk in his voice. I felt my blush deepen.

“Yes,” I muttered.

“Good.” He was still smirking, I could tell, but it seemed like he was gonna lay off trying to provoke me as much as I was laying off trying to provoke him. Which… was mildly baffling, but it felt kind of incredible. “Matt deserves someone to be sweet to him.”

“How d’ya know I’m sweet to him?”

“He said so. It’s almost annoying, how cute his notes are.” I giggled.

“You’re being awfully sweet yourself, today,” I said quietly. _ Like, AWFULLY sweet. _

“No I’m not. I’m a monster.” His tone was sarcastic.

“Is that you warning me not to tell anyone ever about how sweet you’re being?”

“How well you know me, apprentice.”

“I’ve learned a few things about you, bein’ here,” I chuckled. For a moment, he was quiet.

“Very few people ever tried to learn about me,” he murmured. I felt my heart start to crack a little. His voice wasn’t wavering, wasn’t even close to sad by anyone else’s standards. But coming from Kylo, just a softer tone like that was tantamount to fuckin’ misery, probably.

“I’m sorry.” I wanted to turn around, then, and look at him. But I had a feeling the only reason we were having this conversation was because I couldn’t see his face. “I know Matt’s the easy one to get along with, but I still think everyone deserves a friend.”

“I never learned to make friends, to be fair. I just learned to protect, and to attack before I had to defend, and how to use the godawful rage I always feel to finally, maybe, get something I wanted.” 

“Did you always want to rule the galaxy?” I asked, uncertain if I should pry but compelled to anyway. It’s not like he wouldn’t make it obvious when he wasn’t interested in talking about something, anyway.

“No. I did want to be powerful. I still do. Power is the only thing that protects us,” he replied.

“Maybe not the _ only _ thing,” I murmured. I squeezed his fingers a little, trying to be reassuring. I was warm, now, like normal human temperature except maybe my toes, but I didn’t want to move at all. Unexpectedly, Kylo nuzzled his nose into my neck just like he had in the shuttle on Kaller. _ Oh. _ My breath hitched a little. “Now you have all the power in the galaxy.”

“Not all of it,” he sighed. “Politics don’t interest me. The Force does. You certainly have some power… I don’t think I could ever have.” I felt my stomach do a flip. _ Joke’s on you buddy, my power is that I can break the fourth wall, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. _

“You might be surprised.” I squeezed his fingers again, like I was developing a morse code for when I wasn’t sure what else to say. This time, he squeezed my hands in return. We laid there in the silence again, and I just felt really, really strange. Like, this moment of vulnerability was just not something I ever, ever, EVER thought I’d share with Kylo Ren. And honestly, I treasured it. His person-ness. Finally I saw what I’d recognized so deeply from the start-- howling anger, self-doubt, and beneath that a dense mantle of fear, and deep down past all that fear… love, fierce and diligently hidden away from everyone, maybe even himself. But protectors protect because they love, right? He protected Matt and Ben because he loved them, and their system survived because he did. 

I sighed. I was suddenly profoundly weary, my very cells felt exhausted. Still reluctant to leave the bubble of strange, unguarded warmth that had spontaneously arisen, I let myself start to doze.

“Aeon,” came Kylo’s voice quietly. I jerked awake a little.

“Mm?” 

“You need to rest.”

“Mm.”

“I can take you back to your room.” This wasn’t a suggestion, really, though it wasn’t the harshest order he’d ever issued either.

“Should go see Lucky later,” I mumbled, prying one hand away from his to rub my eyes. “After sleep.”

“That is wise.”

“Mm.” I blinked, tried to sway my body around and remember how to move it in my bleary haze. I don’t think I managed to move much at all, though.

“I’ll carry you.” I was about to insist that I was fine to walk when I felt the gentle nuzzle of his nose into my neck one more time, and he took in a deep breath like he was trying to remember how I smelled for later. That made my insides go to jello. Confused, sleepy jello. He pulled away from me, and moved me gently so he could scoop me up into his arms like Matt always did. I locked my arms around his neck, laid my head on his shoulder. There was no reason to speak, really, so I was quiet and very drowsy as he carried me all the way back to my quarters. The door slid open to welcome us, and he took me back to the bed, laying me down with utmost gentleness. My head hit the pillow and I was half-asleep already, profoundly drained.

“Kylo?” I murmured as his hands drew away from me. I flung my arm out to feel for him, since my eyelids were made of lead. My hand found his strong arm.

“Yes?” He stilled, gripping my arm gently as I gripped his, as though to let me know he was there. I slid my hand down the length of it until I found his hand, still gloveless and warm.

“Thank you.” I squeezed his fingers a final time, hoping he knew that I was grateful for a lot more than just his help recuperating from getting long-distance zapped by the Emperor. I felt his other hand come over mine, holding it between his scarred palms like a baby bird. He paused. I knew he didn’t really know what to say. I wondered vaguely if anyone had ever thanked him before.

“Rest well, Aeon,” is what he finally chose. And with that, he laid my hand gently back on my belly and left. I was so zonked I didn’t even hear the door slide shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uuugh rereading this to edit it gave me heart palpitations. Kylooo T-T he just wants to be understood, y'all. bless his angry little heart. 
> 
> i am so floored, like all the time, by y'alls response to this. thank you so much for sticking with it because i really NEVER intended for it to go on this long. but Kylo, Matt, Ben, and Aeon all have a story that has to come out. i'm just grateful you're all along with me for the ride <3 <3


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I get a check-up from the neck up.

The medical bay lights were harsh on me the next day, like my body was recovering still from whatever Force fuckery ol’ Palp had pulled the day before. I was sitting there under the brain scanner, closing my eyes against the brightness.

“Have you been experiencing a lot of paranoid thoughts?” Lucky was asking. My check-up so far had been physical only, and so this strangely specific question surprised me.

“Um, I think maybe just being worried a certain Sith Lord, who’s s’posed to be dead by the way, is gonna come try and fuck me up through the Force… dunno if that’s actually paranoid at this point, Lucky.” Was it paranoid? It didn’t seem paranoid. I mean, I’d been feeling jumpy, sure. But I was traumatized, damn.

“I understand. But your test results are showing a lot of hypervigilant neural activity, and wave-particle phasing has been high. This combination can occur during episodes of delusional paranoia.” 

“No, I don’t think I’m delusional. Not yet, at least.” My tone was curt.

“I was merely being thorough, Aeon.” 

“Thank you.” I was mildly annoyed, but to be fair the droid was in fact very good at its job. “Sorry. I’m just… stressed.”

“That is quite reasonable. Have you experienced any other symptoms recently?”

“I…” _Wait a minute. Have I? Is there just a lotta shit that’s been going on, like so much that I haven’t noticed them, or?_

“Hallucinations? Depression?”

“Um.” I blinked. “No. I don’t think so. I haven’t even seen Kylo’s demon in a while.” I said it like it wasn’t _ my _ hallucination, but I had this feeling deep down that the demon wasn’t so much my own brain making something up, but more me seeing something that was part of Kylo with my own fears superimposed over it. I mean, maybe I was wrong, but after seeing it down on Dagoba too, it seemed plausible.

“That is good news. To what do you think you might attribute this change?” it asked me.

“I really think I’ve been… distracted. I can’t believe I didn’t have more symptoms after karaoke night. But there’s just been so much to deal with, lately.” I rubbed my finger over my bottom lip as I tried to think of literally any time I’d experienced a recognizable symptom. “Wait, okay, I almost forgot I had a really little seizure the other night. It came with a vision, too. It was shorter than the other ones.” I wasn’t used to thinking of seizures as symptoms of anything but withdrawal, of course. _ I was kinda hoping those were over, but I guess not. _

“When was this?”

“I dunno, like three or four nights ago?” 

“That is imprecise, my liege.”

“You only call me that when you’re annoyed,” I said flatly.

“I do not experience annoyance,” Lucky replied. I lifted my eyebrow at it. _ Sounds fake, but okay. _

“I dunno, Sevens. I’m really soupy in the skull right now. Could you cut me some slack?” Before the droid could retort I had a thought. “Maybe the exercise I get training with Kylo has been helping the symptoms? I wonder.” 

“This seems possible, yes. Have you been sleeping better?”

“Uh, aside from the whole trip to Dagoba, kinda yeah.”

“That is also likely a mitigating factor.”

“I guess so.” I really didn’t know, and it felt weird to think I was suddenly ‘doing better’ when really I had just been dealing with one fucking mess after another. I always did function better during crisis, after all. At least, when I wasn’t inducing my own crisis. 

“How are you feeling now?” Lucky asked.

“Um.” I thought about it. Everything felt blurry and far away. “I think I’m anxious about the Emperor mostly. Kylo’s even a little nervous about it, which might be rubbing off on me.” I tapped my fingers on the side of the hospital bed. 

“I cannot advise you on matters of the Force, I am afraid,” the droid replied. “This is something you may need to consult the Supreme Leader about. I can only recommend something for the anxiety you express, if it becomes unmanageable.”

“Thanks, Lucky. I’ll let you know.” I sighed and slid up to my feet. “I need to go.”

“Very well, Aeon.”

With that I made my way from the medical bay to my room, and crawled onto the couch with my guitar pretty much immediately. I’d made it sound like I had training or a meeting or something, but I didn’t. I just wanted to be fuckin’ alone. I plucked away, remembering more songs than I expected to but still hitting walls with some. But Matt’s hypothesis that practicing might help seemed pretty possible, since at least what I could remember of music was improving.

“That’s nice,” came a voice very suddenly from behind me. I leapt off the couch and spun around, heart in my throat. But it was only Luke, standing all ghosty and sagely behind me.

“Fuck, man.”

“You feeling jumpy?”

“No. I just like to take flying leaps off furniture for fun.” I frowned at him.

“Do you give Kylo this much lip?” he asked, grinning.

“Yes.”

“Ah. Good. Someone has to.” He waved me down. “Sit, sit. I’ll try not to spook you again.”

“Thanks.” I lowered myself onto the couch while he circled around it and sat on the other end. I didn’t ask the question that popped into my head about why a Force ghost would need to sit down. I was a little too focused on the ever-present threat of Emperor Fuckface. “You here ‘cuz of what happened yesterday?”

“Yes. I’m lucky we’ve been linked enough that I felt it,” he said gravely.

“So, no chance you coulda helped me out, when that was happening?” I asked.

“Not in that moment, no, or I would’ve. He’s fucking impossible to track down. I mean, he’s Darth Sideous, so I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less.” Luke sighed, looking weary.

“You’ve felt him before, then?”

“Very rarely. Very faintly.”

“He’s supposed to be dead.”

“I know. And no Sith ever learned the ability to reappear using the Force after death, so I’m at a loss.” He looked very seriously at me. “Did Ben feel him?”

“I dunno if Ben did. But Kylo didn’t. Matt seems to be able to tell when I’m in danger, but I don’t know if he felt Palpatine or not.” I gave him a pointed stare. _ You need to get with the program about the DID, dude. It’s past time. _

“Sorry,” muttered Luke, throwing my a guilty glance. “But it’s not great that Kylo couldn’t feel it. He’s arguably the best equipped of them to do so, right?”

“As far as I know, yeah, seems like he’d be the one.” The old man shook his head. 

“I don’t like that. I got a bad feeling about this.”

“Every time you say that, something bad happens. Have you noticed?” I gave him a humorless smile. He returned it just as humorlessly. “Do you have any wise advice for what I can do? How I can keep him out?”

“You resisted him. That’s good. You need to build up on that. Build the walls.”

“Kylo says I invite people to show themselves, rather than trying to break down their walls. I kept him out once when he tried to pry, but I don’t think he was giving it his all.” _ Great. Is this gonna turn into some Snape and Harry Learn Occlumency shit? Where someone invades my brain until I figure it out? I hate that. I hate it a lot. _

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. If you can’t keep Kylo out, you’ll never keep Sideous out. Right now I think it’s your intermittent connection to the Force that keeps him from finding you. Or maybe he’s weaker than I think,” he said. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. I sighed.

“Okay. I’ll bring that up to Kylo I reckon. He might be thinking that already, anyhow,” I said, rubbing my forehead.

“Are you sure he won’t try to bring you to Palpatine? Won’t try to open you up to the dark side even more that way?” Luke asked, brow knit. I stared at him. I fully had not considered it. Not after how sweet Kylo had been after it happened…

“I…”

“Aeon. You can’t tell me it’s not a possibility.”

“Fuck, man! I don’t want that! We’ve been doing so well!” I slammed my fist into the couch cushion fruitlessly. I really, really, REALLY did not like that idea. But I couldn’t discount it, and Luke and I both knew it.

“Oh yeah? How well?” he asked me, clearly curious.

“He… he’s being really nice to me. Like, respectful, I mean. He’s always riding this line though, with what he encourages me to do. Like right now I should probably kill Hux for conspiring to have both of us murdered. Except I can’t help but feel like that’ll just point me straight to the dark side. Then again, who fuckin’ knows. I don’t fuckin’ know. That’s my problem. I dunno what brings you that way. What’s right and what’s wrong aren’t the same here as they were at home.” I put my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees, suddenly overwhelmed. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I can’t say I’d push for you to leave Hux alive, incidentally. He’s a threat not just to you and Ben-- er, Kylo? Well, all three of them, really-- but also to the Resistance and the galaxy in general.” He glanced to the side, expression annoyed. “He’s also a fuckin’ dick.” I snorted.

“And a space Nazi. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I oughta have him executed,” I replied. _ Okay, that really puts it into perspective. I still don’t like the idea of deciding I’m right for the sake of the Resistance’s cause, though. Like even if I’m not into the First Order, killing for a cause feels like a slippery slope. _ I turned my head to peek over at Luke. “Am I doin’ this right?”

“I don’t know what the right way is, exactly. But you’ve reminded Kylo of his humanity lately, I know that much.” He smiled at me. It felt pretty validating to be smiled at by Luke Skywalker, I won’t lie. “Won’t pretend to know how exactly, but I think that’s gotta be the first step. Can’t think of a better one.”

“Thanks,” I said, sitting upright again. “I mean, I thought there was some progress. In the context of this setting, of course. I wish… I know he wants to find Rey, still. He doesn’t tell me everything he’s doing. He doesn’t think I have an agenda. I reckon it would be good to get him away from this ship, his stomping grounds. Literally. He stomps every fuckin’ where.” 

“I think your gut is a good one. If that’s what feels right, maybe you should do it,” he encouraged me. _ Jeez, I hate how much you DON’T tell me what to do sometimes, but okay. _

“You… you got my back, right?” I was feeling that anxiety about Palpatine again. And about how iffy my entire presence here was. And about how much I did not trust myself to not act on impulse and slide right smack into the dark side.

“I brought you here. You can bet, if I can do something to help you, I will.” He smiled again. “Sorry in advance for anything I can’t do-- but I’ll try to warn ya, at least.”

“Thanks.” I half smiled at him, half rolled my eyes at him. The old man was turning out to be only quasi-reassuring, but I’d take everything I could get. 

“Sure thing, kid.” I glanced over at my guitar, thinking about home ever so briefly. When I looked back up at the other end of the couch, Luke was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick chapter for you lovely folk while i edit some nice gooey Matt stuff. poor Aeon's brain is just trying to adjust!


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I get the awkward apartment tour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: there's some more smut in this chapter, towards the end!

I couldn’t help but text Matt, that night.

**Hey, Matt?**

**Yeah wobbles? What’s up?**

**Do you wanna come over? I had a rough night last night. And a rough medical exam this morning. **

**Kylo said you could probably use some company in his note. You wanna come up here, to our suite? **

(Okay, I won’t lie, that caught my attention. Kylo telling Matt I could use some company? Like, that’s… that’s really actually legitimately nice of him? But also I FINALLY GET TO GO TO MATT’S ROOM!)

**Um, yeah!**

**Okay!! You can come anytime. Kylo’s done for the day.**

**Oh shit, I’ll be right up!!**

**You know how to get here?**

**You’re the one who taught me to use the map, dingleberry.**

**Okay. Just checking :^)**

**See you soon!!**

Yeah, I totally taught Matt about how to make smiley faces with punctuation. There are no emojis in space, so my knowledge of the Great Before-Time of the Internet where punctuation emoticons reigned supreme was finally useful for any reason at all. 

Donning a short tank top and a fresh pair of black pants that fit a lot like harem pants, because I was trying to be comfy dammit, I marched along through the halls. I checked my map obsessively, trying to find the Official Supreme Overlord Suite. It took a lot longer than I thought, and I realized belatedly that maybe I should have just accepted Matt’s guidance. Or maybe I was just anxious about being late, despite having not set an actual arrival time.

“I almost wandered out to try and find you,” he said as he opened the door to his chambers when I finally showed up. The rooms behind him were huge. The suite had a sitting room, a dining nook with a beverage dispenser, a bedroom, and a proper bathroom. It was spacious and dark, with all the black and gray, but I was starting to get used to the unofficial First Order color scheme. The lighting was cozy, too.

“Wow,” I said, looking around. “This is real nice.”

“I’d say thank you, except I didn’t set it up it at all.”

“Kylo?” He nodded, and I smirked. _ Of course the Dark Lord Himself created this broody space. _ Matt came over to me, and put his hand on my arm.

“Can I show it to you?”

“What, like the awkward apartment tour? Sure,” I laughed.

“What’s awkward about it?”

“You know, the awkward tour you give the first time you bring someone over.” I wagged a brow at him, and he just shook his head.

“Oh, that. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but sure,” he chuckled. I pulled off my boots before he could guide me away from the door. Because fuck shoes. As he showed me around the sitting room and the dining nook, he gave a long-suffering sigh.

“I hate that Kylo won’t decorate the place more. It’s sooo minimal. I don’t get to come out when we’re planetside, so I don’t get to buy or collect things to bring back for the walls.”

“Where’s Vader’s helmet?” I asked, trying to joke. “Does that count as decor?”

“He, uh, he put it away, recently.” Matt seemed uncomfortable.

“Oh, I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me, maybe.” 

“Mostly it’s just… I didn’t know you knew it was here.” _ Oh yeah, meta-knowledge. I really almost forgot about that. _ “But I guess he told you. Or you sensed it. Right?”

“Uh, it’s uh, hard to miss, yeah.” I'd truly forgotten just how much shit about Star Wars nobody here really knows that I already know, and _ not _ because of the Force. But I got the impression that maybe the helmet made Matt uncomfortable in and of itself, too. “So, do I get to see the royal bedchamber, or is it too soon?” I asked, grinning and changing the subject.

“I want to make you jealous of the bathtub, first,” he said, smirking as he drew me by the hand through the darkened bedroom and over to the bathroom door where the lights were on. As we walked in, the first thing I saw was the _ magnificent _ corner tub. Black ceramic with gold accents, in a bathroom that was all white stone with gray veining on the walls and black tile on the floor. The rest of it was beautiful, sure, but that damn tub took center stage. My eyes flew wide open, and I stared back at Matt.

“Old man Snoke had a bougie streak, didn’t he?” I grinned. _ Fuck, you could fit four people in it, if they all liked each other well enough. _ I wondered if there were jets in it, like a hot tub.

“If that means that he had a fondness for the color gold and excessively dramatic architecture, then yes,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “I’m glad you never saw the old furniture in the rest of this place. It was _ so _ unnecessary.” I started to giggle, because I definitely did not expect Matt to start talking like this was an episode of _ House Hunters _.

“Wow, somebody has strong feelings about interior decorating!”

“Well would _ you _ put gold brocade or red velvet on _ every _ piece of upholstered furniture in a sitting room? Because if you would, we might have to re-negotiate our relationship,” he joked. _ Holy shit. _ Giggling harder, I walked over to the tub and perched on the edge of it, feeling along the trim. I glanced over at the shower, and it was one of those big ones that’s in the corner of the room with two glass walls and a glass door. Shit was fancy as fuck. Even the toilet and sink were black ceramic. I sighed.

“I’d put up with a whole lotta ugly to have a tub this big,” I admitted. I looked back at Matt, and since the lighting was brighter in here than it was in the other parts of the suite I noticed his clothes for the first time. It wasn’t that he was dressed up-- just a gray t-shirt and black pants-- but I got a little distracted by his arms.

“Well, there’s plenty of room in this one,” he said. He must have noticed how I was looking at him, because he slunk towards me with a shy but excited expression on his face and ran the backs of his fingers down my bare arm. The path they left raised goosebumps that started to spread. “You look incredible, today, by the way. Did I say that already?”

“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I replied, leaning towards him. He bent his blonde head down, and I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he ran his nose from my jaw to my temple and pressed his lips into the soft skin just in front of my ear._ Oh fuckity fuck fuck. _

“Can I show you the bedroom?” he murmured into my ear. My silent response was to stand up from the tub, as close to him as I could manage, taking his hand. The nail polish was there again, a little messy since he’d done it himself, and I smiled. He drew me gently into the dark room, then did something with his hand. The lights came up, gentle and moody from ensconced lamps in the wall. Although the room was nice, with a large closet and the same elegant furniture along with a _ huge _ bed (that was not covered in gold brocade fabric), it wasn’t that exciting. There wasn’t even a window, which I thought was super weird.

“This is nice,” I smiled at him, slightly confused. _ Is there something I’m missing? _

“That’s not all.” He smiled mischievously, and then waved a hand in front of a control panel by the door. Suddenly, the lights began to dim again and the long, solid gray wall along the left side of the room began to pull back-- to reveal another wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window, like the one in the meditation room. I gasped as a huge, beautiful blue planet came into view. The light from it was bright enough to see by. I darted over to the window immediately, putting my hand on the glass, staring. I could see its clouds being twirled around by air currents, and could just make out the tiny green archipelagoes that dotted the entire surface below them. I’m so serious when I say that shit _ never _ gets old. And from this vantage, we were closer to the planet than I’d been so far in the meditation room.

“Oh, wow,” I whispered as I let my hand fall away from the cold surface. “It’s so beautiful.” 

“Kylo seemed to think you’d appreciate this window a lot more than we have been lately,” Matt said, and I heard him approach me from behind. His big, lovely hands slipped around my waist, his head bent down to run his lips along the soft fuzz on my head. I didn’t even have time to think about how apparently Kylo had encouraged him to show me this before he ran them down from there to my jaw, then down my neck to my collarbone. I think my goosebumps got goosebumps. 

“Did he?” I murmured, no longer full of quippy bullshit. Was it just me, or did Matt get more… assertive, in his own space? He was still gentle, but damn. He had me swooning hard, y’all. I turned and brought our mouths together, feeling my body light up once our lips met. Mid-kiss, he hoisted me up and held me against him, letting me lock my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders.

Then he spun us around a couple of times, and I felt him giggle into my mouth before he let himself collapse backward to sit on the edge of the bed with me still wrapped koala-style around him. I laughed.

“You are _ so _ fucking cute,” I informed him. He blushed and looked away, and believe it or not I didn’t scream with delight, somehow. “How are you the cutest fucking thing ever?”

“You make me feel cute,” he giggled. _ How the fuck was his response to that even cuter?_

“I see you painted your nails again.”

“Yeah!” He smiled and brought a hand up to show it to me. “Kylo hasn’t seen yet. It’s not his thing, but he wears the gloves all the time anyway. So I don’t care if he gets mad. I think it’s more about the persona thing you were talking about than anything else, though.”

“Yeah, he has to wear the Big Bad Supreme Leader suit. I get it.” I rolled my eyes anyway, though.

“I do too. He could remove it if he really thought he had to. I’d be sad, but I don’t get the body as much as he does,” he said, shrugging. I canted my head, thinking about the day before.

“Kylo said you were pushing him to take care of me yesterday. How does that work?”

“Uh, well, when I’m in co-pilot and I want to push, mostly I just try to move the body or try to let him know what I want to do. Something between those two. I don’t push him on much. He’d get pretty angry at me if I tried all the time. But I’m not interested in being Supreme Leader, so there aren’t a lot of things he does with his day that I’m going to push him about. Just you.” He smiled that one smile, you know the one. Like you’re the only star in the sky. I felt my cheeks start to warm. “I don’t bug him during your training sessions at all, usually. But I felt that you were in trouble yesterday.”

“Thank you. I genuinely appreciate that.” I sighed. “He… he did alright, taking care of me.” I realized in the middle of my sentence that I was still wondering just how much Kylo had wanted to help me himself. And I was still a little shocked by just how sweet he’d been, how much he’d opened up.

“Good. He doesn’t really seem to know how to be helpful like that, so I had to push to kinda help him out,” he told me. “He was worried about you too.” _That… was almost a direct answer to my question._ I decided to shove the thought from my mind, for now. Instead I ran a hand through Matt’s blonde hair and changed the subject.

“Did you know that there’s a name for your condition? Or, well, y’alls condition?” I asked. He canted his head adorably, as was his wont.

“There is?”

“Yeah, on my planet. It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder. DID, for short. Though, I don’t really think it’s always a disorder, per say, but. There’s all these sub-types, I don’t remember what they are and they’re not important, anyway. A book can’t tell me anything about what y’all actually experience in there. But I thought you might think it was cool that enough people have the same thing going on that it’s been studied and written about.” He listened to me intently, and there was a revelatory smile in his expression as he thought it over.

“That’s pretty interesting. I didn’t know there was another person _ anywhere _ who was like us!” He seemed delighted at the prospect, of course. Not being the only one is a great feeling, as I know well. “Do you know anyone else with it?” 

“Not personally, though I made some very long-distance friends who do,” I said, pushing a tuft of hair out of his face.

“I’d like to meet them, one day.” He was smiling like a kid. All of a sudden I felt my heart twist up in my chest, as I thought about home- _ really _ thought about it-- for the first time since Dagoba.

“Maybe you will,” I said softly, trying to smile. _ Except you can’t. _

“What’s wrong?” His face fell, and his hand came up to stroke my cheek. I shut my eyes for a moment, pushing away the tears that were lurking. _ Not today, you motherfuckers. Not right now. _

“Just… I miss home. It’s always there in the back of my mind.” I opened my eyes again, and he was looking at me so sweetly.

“We’ll figure it out, hun. I know we will,” he said softly. He placed a kiss on the bridge of my nose, and then he tugged me back on top of him as he fell backwards onto the bed. That did make me feel better, of course. I propped myself up on his chest, looking at him as he asked me another question. “How did you know about the name for us? Did you study that kinda thing on your planet?”

“Not officially,” I chuckled, very wryly. “There’s a book about mental conditions that gets researched and updated regularly. It’s used by a lot of people, like the therapists I told you about. I read it to learn about my own condition, and then I was just curious and read all the other stuff in it.” 

“Is there a name for your condition, too?” he asked. I paused. It’s not like I was afraid to tell him, since I’d already talked to Kylo and briefly even Luke about it. It was just that I’d never been given this much of a chance to define it myself. I realized just how very not-in-Kansas-anymore I actually was all over again, and for the first time I felt that, even though it was kinda fucked up, it also meant a certain... freedom. 

“They call it being bipolar,” I said carefully. “It means that I travel from an extremely active, very fast brain that’s full of thoughts and ideas and motivation, to a very slow brain that is very sad and loses all those thoughts and all that motivation. And sometimes I waffle in between.”

“Sounds… confusing.” His brow was especially knit as he tried to wrap his head around it. It was, like nearly everything else he ever did, very fucking endearing.

“It really is. It happens at different times, or sometimes all at the same time which is very fucking weird. Sometimes I think there’s a trigger, something that cases the shift from one to the other. Sometimes I can’t tell if there is one or not,” I explained.

“That happens to us, me and Kylo and Ben. We can push to come out, but sometimes we just get pulled out. Apparently seeing you in trouble pulls me out,” he laughed. 

“I’m grateful for that, even when it’s not terribly convenient for you.” 

“Yeah,” sighed Matt. “It’s so tiring, to pretend to be Kylo because I popped out unexpectedly. It’s rare, but still. If I can’t _ enjoy _ being in the body, it’s just so disappointing. I so rarely feel like it’s safe to be out. More than Ben does, but still.” 

“I… I feel really lucky, and very honored, that you wanna be out with me,” I told him quietly. He beamed at me, and reached up with both hands to rub my head and then run his fingers along the back of my neck. I shivered. 

“I was curious, at first. I really didn’t know what you would think, but I could barely resist the chance to talk to someone-- a complete stranger. After I did, I…” He trailed off, and his blush returned.

“You what?” I urged. I wanted to hear more and more about whatever made him come visit me in the medical bay that night, whatever made him come back and show me around the technical levels. It was like replaying a perfect first date in my head with more and more details every time.

“I thought you were _ so _ beautiful. Plus, you acted like you weren’t even scared of Kylo. That’s not something you see every day.” Now it was my turn to blush. 

“Rey was pretty spunky, wasn’t she?” _ Oof. Forgot to just take the compliment. Down a point. _

“Kylo built Rey up in his head.” Matt shrugged, seeming divested maybe just because of his understanding of Kylo’s feelings. Rey’s entrance into their life was objectively more cool than mine.

“Yeah, I know. I used that against him once. Now I wish I hadn’t,” I confessed, sighing. Matt’s hands were trailing down my back, now, stroking gently. “I feel like maybe Kylo sees Rey as a symbol of his own failure. And that’s not mind-reading, that’s just my hunch.” 

“I know it’s not mind-reading, because I don’t even think _ he _ knows that about himself,” the blonde replied. He looked like he was impressed.

“It’s why he had a crush on her. Her acceptance would make him feel like he wasn’t a failure. I’ve seen this kinda story play out before, just without all the extra pressure of using the Force and being the Supreme Leader of the First Order. You know, all those lil tiny extras.” I grinned at him. He smirked back. 

“Negligible, really.” He was tugging me up, trying to get my face closer to his. I saved him the effort by pushing myself up to kiss the underside of his chin. Feeling his breath hitch beneath me was _ extremely _ satisfying. Why were we talking about Kylo and Rey, again?

“So, why do _ you _ have a crush on _ me _ ?” I asked him softly, playfully, as I kissed along his jaw. I wasn’t fishing for compliments, thank you very much. I was fishing for a segway into some... less _ verbal _ communication. 

“Oh, I dunno. You’re just very brave, very honest, very funny, very sweet…” _ Oh, you’re the sweet one, _ I thought. “...You’re full of stories, you have an incredible singing voice, you’re good to Ben and you’re even nice to Kylo sometimes…” _ Alright. Very nice. Moving along. _ “...You get so excited every single time you see a planet outside…” _ Okay. Simmer down. I get it. _ “...And you electrocuted Hux, which has endeared you to me permanently.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at that one. “Oh, and I personally think you’re extremely beautiful as I’ve mentioned. So yeah, you know, just a couple reasons.” Then I actually laughed, and hid my face in the crook of his neck while I turned pink. 

Let me just go on record, here, and say that I am _ not _ a person who doesn’t understand why anyone would ever be attracted to them. Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with a lot of things about the way I look, and what is attractive about me and why or why not. But I’ve been bipolar long enough to know that with enough confidence, manically generated or otherwise, I can lure pretty much anyone to the watery grave of having a crush on me. Maybe even sleeping with me. But damn, hearing Matt say all that shit had me almost embarrassed.

“I think you’re beautiful, too,” I told him shyly. Then I actually physically felt the heat on his neck. Like this time he wasn’t just blushing, his entire face and neck had turned red. It was like I’d unlocked a whole new secret level of cute. Which of course meant that now I had to beat that level, and either ascend to the next level or beat the game.

“Nobody’s ever called me _ beautiful _ before,” he murmured. I looked at his face, and he’d shut his eyes and now his long eyelashes were fanning out over his freshly ruddy cheeks, and he was smiling uncontrollably. Honestly, interacting with Matt is like watching a continuous stream of the most upsettingly adorable baby animal videos you’ve ever seen. It’s an active effort not to just squeal about everything he does. Maybe I’m biased. I plucked off his glasses, which were getting mussed up anyhow, and tossed them gently into the far reaches of that enormous bed. Then I gave him a kiss on his cheek. Then the other cheek. Then his forehead, and his nose, and over each eyelid, and on his chin. With each one he got giddier and giddier. _ I’m gonna beat this fucking level, dammit!_

“You’re beautiful in all sortsa ways!” I told him, and finally he clapped his hands over his face and wriggled beneath me and I thought maybe he might actually blow up, so I relented by sitting upright on his torso, watching him and giggling. Finally he peeked out from behind his fingers.

“Maker,” he muttered under his hands. “I dunno what to say!”

“Don’t say anything,” I replied cheerfully. “Your face turning _ that _ red is absolutely what I wanted. You’re so cute it actually hurts.” I saw him roll his eyes under his hands, but he was totally still smiling.

“Okay, well, fine. I guess.”

“It _ is _ fine,” I assured him. “It’s great. You’re great, Matt.” He emerged from his fortress of fingers, still smiling and still red.

“I’m glad you think so.” Despite his shy expression, he reached up from his prone position to place one hand on my stomach. The other hand found one of mine, and held it sweetly. “Listen, I know you love the view out the window, but I think I have the best view in the galaxy, right now.”

“Are you tryna make a comeback? Make me turn red, now?” I accused him even as I’m pretty sure my cheeks turned so pink they were encroaching on red. 

“Maybe,” he replied, grinning. His fingers splayed over my torso, and I could feel their heat through the fabric of my shirt. I could feel heat building somewhere else, too.

“You know, the last time I was in this position you made me feel _ really _ good,” I reminded him, running my free hand across his chest, over his shoulder, up his arm all the way to his hand which rested on me. “I just wanna let you know that.”

“I…” His face was still flushed, his breaths a little heavier as he recalled our most recent night together. “Maker. I can’t stop thinking about it.” His hand started to rub my torso, pressing on it with this subtle need that filled my stomach with butterflies.

“I know the feeling,” I murmured, hand slipping away from his to grip the hard muscles of his arm. 

“I want to make you feel incredible,” he said. Suddenly he sat up, one hand moving to my cheek and the other slipping around my back, and he ran his fingers over the fuzz on my head and held his face very close to mine. “I want you to teach me how.” 

“You’re a fast learner,” I breathed, my skin flushing a little all over. “Will you show me how to do the same for you?” I mean, I had an inkling, but this was Matt’s first everything and I wasn’t trying to make presumptions. 

“I… I’m nervous. But… but I want to. I want to learn this body.”

“Have you given it a test run yet?” I asked coyly, smirking a little.

“Um, no, but.” He took a deep breath. “Now might be a good time.” I could feel the bulge in his pants beneath me, so his logic was sound, I admit. I felt myself getting wet just thinking about it.

“Fuck,” I swore under my breath. “How can I help?” I looked up into his eyes, absolutely burning with lust, and I saw the same reflected in his. There was a veil of anxiousness there, but some will to forge forward had arrived, too. I ran my hands over his chest.

“Will you… um, will you do it with me?” he asked a little awkwardly, but with deep sincerity.

“God yes.” _ Not a problem at all. _ He gave the faintest smile, encouraged. “Help me out of these clothes?” I didn’t need to ask twice. His fingers tugged at the hem of my tank top, and I lifted my arms to have it dispatched immediately. I pulled at his shirt hem too, and he let me peel it off. My hands pressed against the warm expanse of his chest for a moment, eyes wandering over the scars there. When he started to tug off my pants, I slipped backwards off of him to stand up and let him tug them the rest of the way down with careful, anxious reverence. He swallowed, breaths coming in harder, staring at my nudity like it was the first time he’d seen it. I held in my embarrassment at being so admired for a minute. 

“Aeon,” he sighed, sliding to the very edge of the bed and reaching out to wrap his huge hands around my waist. I gasped a little as he tugged me forward and nuzzled his nose into my tummy above my belly button. He kissed my solar plexus, fingers kneading into my lower back muscles. I put my hands in his hair, tousling it a little before I tugged gently and he growled, and my nerve endings started to dance.

“I’ll help you with these,” I said, taking a knee, sliding down through his hands like water as I reached out to the clasp of his trousers. My fingers were a little shaky. I mean, yours would be too, if you were finally about to see Kylo Ren’s/Matt the Radar Technician’s dick, right?

“Oh.” He sat upright and reached down to help me fumble the clasp open. His hands were shaking more than mine were.

“It’s okay,” I cooed, petting his stomach softly. “You can change your mind if you don’t want to do it anymore.”

“I _ really _ want to,” he said hoarsely, urgent despite his nerves. He gripped the top of his pants firmly, and I did too, and together we slid them down over his hips. He leaned forward to pull them under his ass, to his knees, and down to the floor to slip his feet out of them. When he leaned back upright and my eyes followed the little trail of dark hairs down the very lowest part of his belly, I felt my breath catch in my throat.

I don’t know how else to say it, y’all. His dick was _ pretty_. It was so fuckin’ pretty. Of course it was big- everything about him was big. But it had this gorgeous shape, a slight upward curve, already a pearl of precum decorating its broad head. I knelt there, feeling my cunt clench with arousal, hands on his knees as I gazed at it for a moment in awe. His breathing got even heavier and he turned red again. 

“Mattau…” I sighed, looking up at his face. “You really are beautiful.” For a moment he said nothing, only looked at me with a strange expression like I was saying something he never, ever thought he would hear but had always longed to. Somehow his nakedness seemed to make that word hit him even deeper. His pupils were blown way out, flush beginning to spread down his chest. I kneaded his thighs a little, to try to soothe him.

“Now what?” he asked, and I saw his hands still shaking.

“You could touch yourself,” I suggested, my heartbeat picking up at the prospect.

“Oh, yeah…” He looked a little embarrassed, like it was obvious. One hand lingered in his lap. “How?”

“However feels good to you. Just try things.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he looked down at the majestic thing between his legs, and slowly his fingertips slid along its underside lightly. He let out a labored breath and gently held the head of it between his fingers and his thumb, changing the pressure experimentally. My mouth hung open as I stared, totally transfixed as his breaths changed, hitching and blowing out and sucking back in, in response to his own nerve endings. My own swollen nethers were screaming for attention at that point. Then I remembered that he wanted me to do it with him, after all.

I shifted and sat very intentionally before him with my legs spread apart so he could watch me, feet on either side of his own, legs touching. I wanted him close. 

“Take your time,” I urged. When he looked at me, I let one hand fall over the apex of my thighs, running a finger along the slickness there. His cock twitched as he saw me start to rub circles slowly, taking my own advice and not rushing. I watched him watch me, watched his mouth fall slack when I slid two fingers on either side of my clit and let out a moan. Something about his eyes being trained on me like that made every sensation better than it would’ve been otherwise.

Slowly, as I touched myself, I saw his hands go from short little strokes to long tugs on his cock, stopping to rub the sensitive spot at very underside of the tip and letting out a little moan. I was hypnotized by the way his expression crumpled in pleasure, how his pillowy lips pouted even more. I let out another guttural sound of my own as I worked my clit a little faster, sucking in air as my heart began to pound and my nerves began to sing.

“Fuck,” he swore, voice quiet and hungry. I spread my legs a little more to slip my other hand down and twirl my finger around my entrance, and I think his breathing doubled its pace. His pumping hand followed suit, and he gripped himself fully now. I slid my fingers inside, a deep moan escaping my lips as my eyelids fluttered, pushing against the spot I knew so well. I matched his pace, and somewhere in the mounting pleasure our eyes got entangled. We stared at each other’s faces as we panted, bleary-eyed, brow knitting. Each flicker of pleasure that passed over his face seemed to trigger one in me.

“Oh my _ God, _Matt,” I whimpered, and his legs started to tense and his hips to rut. I felt my climax starting to push at me, desperate to be released.

“Aeon,” he mewled back at me, and now my hips were grinding into nothing, thighs shaking, our hands taking a furious pace together. “I’m think I’m gonna-- _ shit, _ I’m--”

“Fuck!” It hit me like a wave, rising up and swelling and then crashing. My eyes rolled back for a second, and I didn’t slow my hands at all. When I managed to look back at him through the crackling haze inside me, Matt was making a low, quivering noise and sweet, sticky strands of cum were falling onto his gorgeous abs. I swear to God, that sight made my orgasm even better, like it’s last hurrah was a toe-curling flourish of pleasure and relief. I collapsed back onto my elbows, finally expired.

“Maker,” he panted, and finally let his torso fall backward onto the bed and slid back a little, most of him now on the mattress. Even though my legs were shaking, I wanted to touch him so badly that I crawled up beside him, placing kisses on his shoulder and collarbone. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, and I glanced down to see his cock twitching. “This might sound stupid, but I forgot about the mess,” he said. I laughed.

“I can help,” I cooed into his ear, before I slid down to lave my tongue over the little rivulets of seed. He stared at me while I cleaned up, and I knew I was making a hell of an impression._ Man, this is way more fun when the person’s not expecting it at all. _

“Holy shit.” His hands wrapped around my face and tugged me back up towards him, pulling me into a kiss that deepened a lot faster than his usually did. I felt myself go a little limp letting his tongue search mine for the salty remains of himself. _ Christ alive. _

“So, how was that for you?” I asked him breathlessly when our lips finally parted.

“That…” He shook his head a little. “Was really hot. You’re really hot.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I’ve never had an orgasm before just now.” He said it like he’d just realized it.

“I was hoping this was a good first one.” I smiled.

“It was.” His eyes were heavy-lidded, staring into mine. “I almost lost track of whose body was whose.” I chuckled. 

“Just wait until we get farther along,” I said as I curled up close to him. “I’m glad I could help you out.” He sighed and wrapped an arm around me, and we laid there for a while looking at each other in the quiet while the planet spun almost imperceptibly slowly outside the window.

When I jolted awake, it surprised me. I blinked. I’d only nodded off for a moment. But I desperately didn’t want to leave.

“Matt?” 

“Yeah, hun?” He was still awake, looking at me with the sweetest sleepy expression.

“Can… can I stay here tonight?” I asked, suddenly a little nervous.

“Um.” He thought about it. “I… well, I can’t guarantee you won’t wake up next to Kylo again. I mean you shouldn’t, but I guess since Kaller I feel like it’s possible so I wouldn’t want you to think it’s not. Is that a problem?” I didn’t want to admit to either him or myself just how much I didn’t think it would be a problem at all. I sighed.

“I mean, this bed is large enough it doesn’t have to be awkward. I’d rather wake up next to you, but… I _ really _ would love to fall asleep with you like this.” His smile was one of surprise and joy. It made me feel like I was flying.

“Okay. Let’s flip around, then?” I nodded, and we maneuvered into a similar position but with our heads on pillows this time. He tugged his blanket up around our waists, and pulled me up against him like he had in the shuttle on Kaller. He buried his nose in my neck and breathed into the skin. I hummed with contentment. 

“Sleep well, fierce one,” he murmured.

“You too, lovely,” I sighed. Before I knew it, I was out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dunno if i'm the only one who was totally into the idea of watching Matt figure out how to touch himself... but i have no regrets. :3 he's so cute, and honestly wholesome sex where people respect each other's anxieties and desires and communicate about stuff is something that's sorely lacking in fanfic. not that i'm not building an excuse for some much more, uh, rough smut, but still. why not both? lol
> 
> y'all take care of yourselves this new year's eve! be safe and have fun, whatever you're up to. and as always, thank you for reading and for telling me what you love and what you're curious about and what you'd like to see in this fic. i always have fun with this, and it makes me so happy that y'all do too! <3


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That shit hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE BEGIN THE RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS :o

I was in the meditation room the next day. I’d woken up next to nobody, because whoever had been piloting when Matt woke up had slipped off quietly to the call of duty. But I felt fine, fantastic even, blissfully distracted from the mess that was everything but my relationship with Matt. 

Until I thought I heard the voice of Palpatine again. Whatever he said, it was unintelligible. The creaking scrape of it was faint, distant, behind me but not actually behind me at all. My heart rate had spiked, and even though it was faint and over almost as soon as it began I had still been unable to go back to sleep. So, I got up and put on my clothes and headed out to look out at the silent star field outside the window. There was a planet nearby, I could see its light, but today the window didn’t face it directly.

Kylo didn’t buzz me on either my datapad or my comlink before he arrived, but somehow I’d felt it in my gut that he was coming. _ Is that how the Force works? _ I wondered as I heard the door slide open and then shut again. 

“How are you today, Aeon?” he asked, voice much flatter than his alter’s would have been despite being sincere, I think. He sat beside me on another pillow.

“Better.” I didn’t look at him, yet. Technically it was true, but the moment I’d heard his voice the strange sense of longing and confusion I felt about him leapt into the fray along with my mild euphoria about Matt and my gnawing concerns about the voice. 

“You seem better, but troubled.” 

“That sounds about right.”

“Have you been recovering?”

“Yeah, I’m…” I trailed off, my guts twisting. God, there was so much happening in my brain, and all of it was wildly different. I turned my head to look at him. “I’m worried. I think I heard Palpatine’s voice again. I’m worried he’ll find me before I learn to protect myself.”

“What did he say?” His eyes were keen, almost too interested. That made me uncomfortable, very suddenly.

“Uh, I couldn’t make it out. Like, it was too faint. Is there something you’re waiting to hear?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow at him.

“No. But, there’s been a transmission this morning. Across all frequencies. It was him.” 

I blinked, stunned into silence for a moment. 

“Wh-what… did he say?”

“He’s threatened revenge on the remnants of the Rebellion, and to take control of the galaxy.”

“He was not specific as to what sort of revenge, I assume?” I asked dryly, feeling myself suddenly start to feel, of all things, anger. Why was Kylo lowkey hype about this? Possibly I was angry at the writers too, as usual.

“No.” Kylo’s forehead wrinkled the tiniest bit, clearly detecting my change in mood. “But I mean to find him.”

“Um, why?”_ Hell fucking no! _

“He is a threat. He needs to be eliminated.” 

“I agree on that point,” I said, but I was still feeling this little sting of anger. “But what is he a threat to, exactly?”

“To me. To the First Order. And to _ you_,” he pointed out.

“He’s also a threat to the entire galaxy, if there’s any weight behind his scheme for revenge, and Sheev never struck me as the kinda guy who would make empty threats.” I stared at him, trying to decide where this fucking anger was coming from. “He’s a threat to everyone. To everything. He’s the only Sith that’s left, assuming you still don’t identify as such.”

“I never was, nor ever wanted to be, one of the Sith,” Kylo growled. “After a while, the Jedi lost their glamour over me, too. You know that.”

“So--” I was about to quip at him, but I felt that feeling that I’d felt before. The awful sensation of being watched, times about fifty. I glanced out the window at the stars, staring between them like I might see something. Did I see something? Or was it just the light bending, tricking me?

“Aeon, are you alright?” Kylo asked, and this time I heard the concern in his voice.

“No,” I spat, whipping my head around to glare at him, full of irrational and mounting anger and fear that had only gotten worse with the feeling that had just passed over me. “I’m not alright. I’m stuck here and now Sheev motherfucking Palpatine knows it. He said to me, Kylo, he said that I would come to him. And you’re tellin’ me now that you wanna _ take _ me to him?” 

He was silent for a moment, brow furrowing. He genuinely looked a little disturbed. 

“He said you’d come to him?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know you’re with me?”

“I don’t know what he knows. I just know he said that. And I know that I absolutely do _ not _ wanna go to him.” I felt my heart slamming into my ribs. “I won’t.”

“I plan to kill him, Aeon.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Will you not come with me to that end?” He looked earnestly at me now, his expression actually bordering on pleading. 

“No. No fucking way. I do not want to die here. I want to go home. Did you forget that?” I asked, and I felt a vague threat of tears. _ Ugh. No crying right now!_

“Aeon…” He let out a frustrated breath. “You are so powerful. I’ll be with you. Together we could face him.”

“No,” I said sharply. “No no no fucking NO. He got into my head, Kylo! That was more than enough for me. I don’t even know if I can keep him out!”

“You keep _ me _ out,” he replied. “Unless you’re drunk.” I froze.

“Wait… what?”

“The night you were drinking at the bar, I could hear you. I could feel how nervous you were, how frustrated, how much you liked that bartender--”

“I told you to stay OUT of my head!” I started to shout, my fists balling up. My mind was not interested in the rational explanation.

“I do! But that night I couldn’t help but hear you, your defenses weren’t just down, it was like you were screaming at me because you were so fucking angry at me!” he said, his voice starting to get louder. His face was so strange-- something like longing, mixed up with frustration, worry, and indignation. I was too angry to care that apparently my thoughts had been on broadcast that night. Too angry, and too scared.

“You threatened to dump me in the Outer Rim to die!” I reminded him.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Because I was angry, too! I was so angry that you wanted nothing to do with me. That you compared me to Matt. That you thought I was a weak, petty bully with no respect for you!” He wasn’t yelling yet, in fact it seemed like he was trying not to. There was an edge in his voice, a different edge than I was used to, and it struck me in the guts. I’d hurt his feelings just as bad as he hurt mine, that day, and I knew it. The part of me that hated myself for falling back on cruelty when I was afraid burned in shame.

“You didn’t _ act _ like you respected me. You just bossed me around, and wanted me to do anything you asked, and waited on me to magically understand stuff I’d never been taught. You made me feel like shit that day too, and you never apologized. You just dragged me down to Dagoba to meet all my demons at once!” But I felt flimsy, now, even though I knew I was definitely entitled to those feelings. Like, he really had been a dick. I had too, though. Maybe not as much of one, but more of one than I liked to pretend I was. The tears that had receded before were back now, pressing more urgently at my eyes. _ Fuck. _ I blinked, trying to keep them at bay.

“I know. I know I did those things. But I was sorry. And I _ am _ sorry. I made you my heir apparent that day for a reason,” he said.

_ Holy shit, so he _ did _ change my rank that day. _

“You…” I couldn’t even formulate the rest of that sentence for a minute. I was totally surprised, totally blind-sided. My heart thudded in my ears, and my hands started to shake. I stared at him, and he stared at me. Both of us were swirling around between eddies of anger, remorse, hurt. “You-- do you know what I would do to the First Order if you died on me, Kylo?” I asked him, voice hoarse and quiet as I held back tears. I had no idea if what I was about to tell him was a good idea, but I was flying on instinct. On the deep need from the bottom of my heart to just be fucking honest with him. About who I was, about what I believed in. About who he was training.

“What?” His eyes shimmered, intent.

“I would take it apart. I would offer every person on every ship the chance to leave, to go far away into a new life free of this terrible machine, and then I would blow the entire Navy out of the sky.” I held his gaze, swallowing. “Because I don’t believe in anything this army stands for. I don’t believe in absolute control, I don’t believe that kind of power can really protect you. Not from yourself. It can only hurt other people.”

For a long, silent moment, I waited for him to get angry, to lose control, possibly to cut me in half. Just like the good ol’ days. 

“What do you believe in?” he asked finally, his voice low and strangely… desperate. The question seemed bizarre, anachronistic._ He’s asking me like he doesn’t know what HE believes in. _ Kylo didn’t seem to actually share any sincere political belief with the First Order, or maybe anyone else, I realized. Then I also realized what my answer was. 

“You’re gonna make fun of me,” I muttered, looking away, deflated. I had this awful feeling that all the respect he’d apparently grown for me was about to go flying out the airlock. Suddenly I felt a finger under my chin, and it wasn’t gloved but warm and human. He tugged my face with surprising gentleness back towards his, and his eyes were probing mine like he would find something he desperately needed there.

“Tell me.” It was almost a plea.

“Love.” The tears that had been trying to escape for a while finally filled my eyes, gathered at the corners, one even fell slowly down my cheek. God I fuckin’ hated it. I hated how cheesy it sounded. But fuck, man, it was true! Love was the only thing that got me through the worst times in my life, had even saved it a time or two. I wished he knew it as viscerally as I did. He just looked back at me, jaw working like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, a strange parade of emotions crossing his face. My breath was shallow, still expecting some horrible end to this conversation. 

Then, I felt his thumb reach up and swipe the tear off my cheek as it was falling. His eyes were shining, like maybe there were tears there too. 

“Still?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “After everything that’s happened to you?” I blinked, another tear slipping out of my other eye, and nodded a little. _ Really, really. _ His hand shifted to wipe that tear away, too. 

“You can fire me, if you want,” I murmured, looking away from him again. “I know that’s not, like, an ideal trait to have for an apprentice in your situation.”

“No.” I looked back at him, surprised. His expression was full of raw, terrible anguish even though no tears fell. That did not make me feel better. “But as long as you’ll stay with me here, you’re my apprentice and I will train you to the best of my ability. If you won’t be that, though, I'm afraid can’t let you leave.” He swallowed, and he looked like saying those words hurt him viscerally. “I’m sorry.” 

_ What?? _I stared at him, horrified. 

“You…” Once again I had no idea what to add to the start of that sentence, but I jerked my head away from his hand. My heart felt like it broke into a thousand pieces, while at the same time my anger ballooned and pushed up against my fucking skin trying to get out. Hot tears were falling freely now. I fumbled backwards and away from him on the floor. His face looked so incredibly pained, which is probably the only reason why I didn’t just explode right then and fling him _ through _ the glass wall this time. I shook my head, trying to logic a way to prove that he hadn't really said that. But I knew that if he hurt that much and did it anyway, he meant it.

“You were lying this whole time?”

“No.” 

“Then _ why__?_” I asked, my voice breaking on the word.

“Because you’ll go to them. You’ll help them. I can’t let you do that. Not after everything I’ve worked for.” _ The Resistance. Of course. _

“Was it worth it?” My hands were shaking as I managed to sit up on my knees several more feet away from him. “Everything you worked for? Everything you _ sacrificed_? Is this--” I gestured around the room, towards the rest of the ship-- “worth it?” He stared at me, and he was vibrating with every terrible emotion.

“It’s all I have left,” he said, his voice a strange combination of a mutter and a scrape. I shook my head.

“No it’s not, Kylo. I don’t believe that’s true.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe.” He stood up now, but he didn’t come any closer to me or threaten me in any way. “All that matters is what’s real, and right now what’s real is that I have to kill the Emperor before he kills me, or you, or anyone else. Before he can take anything else from me.” It was far from the first time someone had felt the need to tell me what was ‘real’, to cage me in the confines of what mattered to them by pushing my reality away. It stung in a place that was much deeper and older than Kylo even knew. He turned and started walking towards one of the openings in the glass wall. 

“Am I a prisoner now?” I asked him, and it was a strange and terrible deja-vu from the very first time I’d met him in the medical bay. He stopped, and turned around to look at me.

“Should you be?” I knew he was asking me if I would stay his apprentice, or if planned to try to get in his way-- or to leave. I genuinely didn’t know the answer, though most of me was dying to capitulate just because of how horribly alone I would be without him. Despite that, there was a part of me that was still howling in miserable defiance, still wanted to do something-- anything-- that felt real to _ me _. 

Our eyes lingered on each other in the crushing silence for a moment longer, his question remaining unanswered. Then, Kylo Ren turned and exited the meditation room. As he did, the weight of the air went with him, and I was left in a terrible void.

For the second time since I got here, I laid down on the floor of the meditation room and bawled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand it's Kylo angst o'clock, y'all. D:


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fuck the pain away, but make it wholesome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as you may have guessed, there is indeed smut in this chapter!

I was lying in my own bed, still in the clothes I’d worn to Matt’s room and then Kylo's lesson two days before, feeling like a stone. It was full-blown depression time. I could afford to feel nothing, because any feeling that dared near the surface of my consciousness made me wish I was dead. It was that bad, y’all. It was passive, of course. I was too devastated, too confused, too frightened to do anything. The pain of it had glued me to my bed. Sometimes I slept, but I usually woke from terrible dreams about my parents, about becoming an evil overlord, about Kylo (and therefore Matt and Ben) dying, about all kinds of shit. Mostly I just laid there, staring into the gloom with eyelids that were leaden but unable to close, slowly retreating further and further from my body. Sometimes a stray terrible thought would rise up, and I would sob into my pillow until I was so exhausted that I’d gone numb again.

I did this for about two months straight once, back at home. That was the worst it ever got. I mean I did it for shorter periods too, but usually this degree of catatonia wouldn’t stick around for long. But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I felt unable to respond to anything, and incidentally in that bleak ass room I had nothing to respond to anyway. I was still technically free on the ship, since I had yet to offer Kylo my submission-- that thing he’d once coveted so much-- or persisted in defiance and been tossed into the brig right next to Hux. I wondered once or twice how long this could last, not especially invested in the answer.

I was going on my 70th hour without food, by my guess, when I heard my datapad chirp on my bedside table. I rolled over to look at it.

It was a message from Matt.

**Aeon? Can I come to you?** I blinked at it. It took the words a long time to sink in. I guess I’d just resigned myself to the idea that I wasn’t gonna see him again until I somehow managed to settle with Kylo, which was a depressive thing to assume since I also knew that Matt and Kylo were different people, and that Matt had free will and cared for me. Clearly he knew at least the gist of what had happened. I reached out with a hand that was so stiff it felt like a rusted droid’s hand to pull the datapad to me and peck out a response.

**Ok**

**Now?** His reply was almost instant. 

**Ok**

**You in your room?**

**Yes**

**I’ll be there really soon.** I didn’t reply, just turned off the screen and curled up with the thing cradled in my arms. I was unaware of the passing of time, but it felt like it took Matt both two minutes and a hundred years to arrive at the same time. The door slid open without a chirp.

“Aeon!” he said as he shuffled over and put something on my bedside table. I didn’t look at him, didn’t feel like I could move at all, wasn’t even sure he was real for a minute. But he slid right onto the bed, tugging the datapad out of my arms and wrapping around me. My face was buried in his massive chest, one arm slipped under my head and the other around me, stroking my back. As soon as he touched me, I felt my body suddenly collapse from stone into water. “Aeon,” Matt murmured again, pressing his lips into my fuzzy head. “I’m here. I’m sorry.” 

Without warning, a howling sob burbled in my throat and then tore its way out. His arms grew tighter around me, holding me close and stroking my back ever so gently as I ugly cried into his chest. I have no idea how long that went on, either. I just know that every time I thought I was done crying, another wave of sobs would wrack me. Matt just held me, making soft cooing sounds and whispering ‘I’m here’ every time he felt my whole body shudder as I gasped for breath. It was as much his presence, his gentle sweetness, that was causing me to cry as anything else. When people are really nice to me when I’m really fucked up, I usually cry more than when people are hurting me.

Finally I had been mostly quiet except for soft sniffles for a while. There was water all over my cheeks, tears all over his shirt, and my nostrils were leaking. That’s my least favorite part of crying. His hand was petting the back of my head. 

“You haven’t eaten, have you?” he asked softly. I shook my head, face still pressed against him. “That’s what I thought. I brought you some food.” This caused a fresh cascade of hot tears, though I managed not to sob anymore. I wanted to speak, to thank him, but my throat was swollen and ravaged and something was stopping the synapses in my brain from getting the signal ‘say something’ to complete its mission at my mouth. So I just tried to bury my face even deeper into his body. “Can I pull away to get it for you?” I paused, and for a moment I wanted to say ‘no’, wanted to beg him not to leave me. But I knew this was just the irrational emotional state I was in, and since he’d mentioned food I could almost feel the painful emptiness in my stomach, so I nodded instead.

He gently unwrapped himself from around me, sitting up to reach over and pull the plate of food I could just barely smell off the little table. He kept his other hand on me the whole time, resting on my forearm. I still hadn’t looked up at his face, my eyes looking past everything in front of them and into the familiar and godawful abyss of depression. 

“Can you sit up?” he asked, squeezing my arm gently. At his prompting I slowly pushed myself upright for the first time in hours. My hands felt swollen and weak as I took the plate of food from him and rested it on my lap, staring down at it blankly. He slid a fork onto it for me, and then he brought a clean white napkin to my face and began to dry my cheeks and nose. He was so careful, so tender, so very sweet. I hoped I wasn’t crying again about it, but at that point I almost couldn’t tell. The pain in my stomach was sharp. I swallowed the lump in my throat, or tried to, and brought a very light forkful up to my mouth. 

“There you go.” He sat there with his crossed legs pushed up against mine, one hand on my knee as he watched me weakly and slowly feed myself. I couldn’t look at him, could barely summon the energy and wherewithal to perform the motion of shoveling the food onto the fork and then past my lips. I registered no real taste, no real experience of eating. I just did it until I couldn’t anymore, until the thought of another bite made me want to retch. 

I let the fork fall back onto my plate. There was still food there, but apparently Matt was satisfied because he gently took it and put it back on the bedside table. He wiped my face and mouth again with the napkin.

“Will you drink a little water for me now?” he cooed, holding a glass to me. My eyes blearily registered it, and I wrapped my hands around it and took a gulp. I managed one or two more before I pushed it away and he returned it to the table, too. Then I felt his hand on my cheek and I finally looked up at him through bloodshot eyes. His expression was so overwhelmed with worry, eyes glassy with unshed tears. I stared at him, lip trembling. He shook his head a little, running his thumb over my cheek, his other hand taking my other cheek to cradle my face. 

Saying nothing, he simply leaned in and placed the most delicate, gentle kiss on me. He held it there, his plush lips inviting mine to be tended, to release into his care. I felt everything fall away, felt myself nearly go limp as his warm mouth pressed wet and serious into mine. The nerves in my neck and head and all around my ears started to tingle with the caress of his tongue. I felt heat slowly reach down and take its hold in my belly, spread its tendrils out to my limbs which had been so stiff and lifeless before. It was like the misery inside me finally began to stir, to seek a way out of me through his touch. 

When his tongue reached deeper into my mouth, filling it with warmth and hunger, a pang of desire flew from my mouth to my clit. It’s not usually easy to get me turned on when depression hits me that hard, but this is Matt we’re talking about. Apparently my body was into him no matter what. I trembled, and whimpered faintly into his mouth. 

“Can I touch you?” he murmured when he finally pulled away from me. “Will it make you feel better? Just a little? Just for a little while?” It was like he knew that no amount of, well, _ anything _ would fix it. But he was so earnest in his desire to offer me the least little relief, and frankly I was starving for that same relief and had not expected it in this form at all. I looked at him with heavy eyes and nodded. He sighed and pressed his mouth against mine once more, trailing his fingers down my neck.

He went about taking my shirt off very simply and very directly, and I lifted my arms and let him in total silence. I pressed my hands into his chest and rubbed it gently, tugging at the fabric of his shirt. Instantly he understood, and pulled his own shirt off as well. I put my hands right back where they’d been, melting into the warmth of his body and the softness of his skin. He bent down to kiss my neck, every movement slow and intense and purposeful. There were no nips or bites, only the warm wetness of his tongue and lips as he kissed his way to my collarbone. I was woozy, already drunk on the feeling after being almost numb for hours. Suddenly his huge hand was on my back and the other was on my belly as he guided my body back to recline against my pillows. He laid beside me, lips pressed against my ear as his hand slowly trailed right down the middle of my chest. I let out a shuddering exhale before his fingers ran over one nipple. To my encumbered body, the sensation was almost overwhelming. But I wanted it, wanted nothing else at all but to feel something, _ anything_, now that Matt was here and I was safe to do so. He kissed me again for a moment, tracing his fingers over my ribs.

When I felt his mouth take my other nipple, I immediately collapsed into the pleasure that shot through me, moaning even as I felt the misery in my bones wrapped up with the relishing of my flesh. He ran his tongue over it, suckled it, slowly trying everything he could think of. When he switched sides, my hand curled into his blonde hair. I drank in huge, deep breaths, trying to let every sensation permeate my entire being.

He lifted his head from my chest and I glimpsed his heavy eyelids and shiny, flushed mouth before it landed back on my own. No thoughts at all were running through my brain, no words were necessary. Only my willing surrender, which I so rarely gave. His hand slid down to my waistband, slipping beneath it. My breath hitched and I spread my legs a little wider, feeling myself start to become deeply aroused. He pulled away from the kiss.

“Can I taste you?” he asked breathlessly. Another pang of desire rattled through me, and I nodded. He began to pull the soft trousers down, over my ass and thighs and down past my knees, his hands at least partly touching my skin the whole way before he flung the garment away. My legs opened to welcome him, to beg him, to need him. I was trembling so hard my chest was shaking, my hands pawing for his at my sides. When he noticed that, he slipped his hands beneath my thighs and wove our fingers together before he looked down at my nethers, taking a huge breath and closing his eyes for a second. I watched him, fixated, wracked with a terrible need for catharsis. 

His nose lingered near my clit, breath hot on me, and I made the most pitiful noise. He looked up at me, eyes sweet and anxiously attentive as his mouth descended finally to my cunt. I responded immediately to the soft wetness, the slow and excruciating lave of his tongue over my clit. Something about how far away from my body I’d been since the last time I’d seen him brought every sensation powerfully home, and my inner thighs were already shaking on either side of his head as he kissed and lapped and slid that powerful muscle between my folds at his gentle and curious pace. 

“Ahh,” I groaned when his tongue dipped inside my entrance. The usual litany of swears and exclamations was nowhere in my mind, only the mewls of a helpless animal that wanted to be free of the pain that was wracking me like nothing had in a long, long time. I pushed my hips into his face, quaking for more. The sheer slowness of his pace was tying my body in knots. He lapped up against the roof of my insides, right at the spot that left me breathless and keening. 

One of his hands left mine, and he licked back up to my clit before he slipped a finger inside me. I cried out a little, staring down at him, meeting his eyes which watched with that same desperate desire to be sure everything felt good, felt right. I was bucking against him almost immediately, and he slid in another finger to appease me. These he curled up and pushed into the place I’d shown him before, and he pumped up against it with a slow and ruinous pace while his tongue resumed its attentions to my clit. 

I can’t remember a time I ever felt so fucking intensely the need to orgasm, the absolutely crushing necessity of releasing the howling gale inside me that had no other way out until that moment. As the edge approached I felt just how betrayed and hurt I was, wrapped up in the electric rapture of my nerve endings, and Matt’s vigilant and tender mouth was the crucible through which I would emerge freed of at least some of how fucking horrible that weight had become while I was paralyzed by depression.

I was crying out with each gasp for air, a stream of babbling whimpers falling from my mouth as my head lolled, eyes fluttered and rolled, and I came with a violence spurred by grief. My whole body went rigid, muscles clamping down around his fingers even as they tried to keep their pace. His lips sucked desperately at my clit and I felt something warm and heard something wet, felt it running down under my ass. I couldn’t see anything, my eyes filled spontaneously with tears that ran down my cheeks, over my temples, onto the pillows, and I sobbed out the end of my orgasm until I was totally spent.

Matt’s touches evaporated, but the warmth of his body returned as he slid up beside me and cradled me in his arms. I was looking into some other part of the universe, blown out of my body by the intensity of my release. But I pushed closer to him, my legs still shaking, tears still streaming, lungs still sucking in air and pushing it out.

Depression feels like death. Like the light and purpose is gone from your life, and your body is just begging to be rid of all its needs. The sadness is almost impossible to describe, it’s so much worse than the word ‘sadness’ can even express. Here, on this ship, I’d felt especially distant when it washed over me. The vitality of the Force was easy to forget when you took it for granted. But once it was gone, its absence was conspicuous. It felt even more like death, because not only had I been feeling dead but so had everything else in the universe that I could no longer feel connected to.

In that moment, despite the overwhelming ache, I felt very, very, very much alive.

“Aeon?” Matt asked in a hoarse whisper, tugging me down from the strange heights that I’d been floating in. My eyes collapsed and refocused on him, his mussed up hair and knit brow and the slickness that still covered his mouth and his nose and his chin. I couldn’t make myself smile, not with my face. But I know I managed it with my eyes as I reached up and wiped at that chin clumsily. He smiled at me, and leaned down to kiss me once more. I could taste myself on him, and maybe it was the oxytocin but I felt like I tasted right on his tongue, like we were very well suited to one another.

“Thank you,” I whispered the first time our lips were far enough apart for me to manage it. He paused, face still right up against my own, breathing deeply in time with me. “I do feel better.” 

“I’m sorry, fierce one. It's not right.” I could tell he was crying a little now. The strange and profound vitality I suddenly felt, the very real acceptance of my own pain and Kylo’s pain and Matt’s pain and Ben’s pain and every fuckin painful thing, washed over me. “I wish--”

“Shh,” I urged. “I understand. I understand why.”

“I understand why too, but it still isn’t fair.”

“He knows that.”

“I really thought he wouldn’t,” Matt murmured. “I really thought he cared enough about you not to do that. Not to keep you here if you didn’t want to stay.”

“He knows, Matt. Beautiful, lovely, sweet thing.” I stroked his face.

“Aren’t you upset with him?”

“Of course I am. But he knows he’s clinging to something. He’s not ready to let go. It’s alright.” Matt pressed his face against mine on one side, our cheek and browbones puzzling together.

“Are you... gonna stay with us?” he asked, in a wavering low tone. I looked up at the ceiling, and I swear I could see through it, through the entire ship, out into the stars. I think I already knew I was going to stay on as Imminent Apprentice. I knew I had no other choice, not really, and Kylo’s lack of trust was something that I couldn’t let come between me and the goal. I was only just realizing how much Luke’s goal was now _ my _ goal too, and the sheer pain of the wound Kylo had left in my heart was what cemented that. I officially, seriously cared about him and his redemption, despite his Supreme Fuckboy status, and if I had to stop thinking about going home to get this thing done… I was finally ready to do it. When I took a long time to answer, I heard Matt’s hoarse whisper. “Because you don’t have to, but I want you to stay.”

“Oh, Matt.” I felt his tears wetting my face, and my heart oozing all around in my chest. It was the most profound mixture of grief and love, and even though it hurt like hell, I felt like we were surrounded by light. The darkness was everywhere, but the light was there to transform it if only we didn’t let it go out. It never was more clear to me how much they needed each other. I wrapped my arms around Matt as much as I could, holding him tight against me. “I’m gonna stay.”

I felt his body heave as he sucked in a huge breath, fresh tears leaving him, his arms returning my squeeze and pressing our skin together. His relief was palpable.

“Okay,” he whispered. I nuzzled his neck with my face.

“I’m still gonna be mad at him for a while, though,” I murmured, rolling my eyes. Matt laughed. 

“You should be. Give him tons of lip. He deserves it.”

“Oh, I’m gonna.” His head leaned back up, and he was really smiling now through the tearstains. I felt a real smile on my own face now, though the pain was still there. “I lov--”

But I caught myself, an old and familiar fear sticking the word to my throat. He looked at me, confused.

“You what?” _ Shit. You fucked up. You fucking idiot. _ My voice was caught, my heart beating in my ears. _ Fuck. _

“I, um.” _ Oh God, you have to say something now. It’s too late. Just do it. _“I don’t want you to think this means I want or need or demand anything from you--”

“Aeon,” he said gently. “It’s okay.” I breathed hard.

“I l-love you.” _ Please don’t trap me in a toxic relationship now, _my trauma-brain thought. Even though it seemed highly unlikely, of course, that fear came with that phrase, at this point in my life. But the urge to say it had arisen so naturally I’d almost forgotten to be afraid. The bright little smile that graced Matt’s face in that moment sucked the fear right out of my chest.

“I love you, too.” He leaned down to kiss me gently, briefly. When he lifted his head again, there were stars in his eyes. Even more, the puddle in my chest was filling up with how much love and fear were the same thing, sometimes. Teasing them apart, man, that was the fuckin’ kicker. I beamed at him. 

“Will you… will you stay here with me tonight?” I asked, a little timidly.

“Yeah. I will. Kylo can deal in the morning,” he said, rolling his eyes. My heart sang.

“Thanks,” I murmured, kissing his chest. He just smiled, and snuggled with me.

We didn’t talk much, that night. But I finally got some decent sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *'Sexual Healing' plays in the background*
> 
> Maaaattt T-T


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I suck it up and keep trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are some lil Rise of Skywalker spoilers here, jsyk.

I messaged Kylo the next day, after waking up (barely) when Matt’s alarm went off. He’d still been piloting, because he got dressed really fast and leaned down to place a very sweet kiss on my cheek and pet my head before he left. I woke up properly later; clearly my body had been desperately in need of a couple extra REM cycles. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything that made me feel small-- no apology, since I wasn’t sure I owed him one. My eventual message read:

**I think I’m ready to build my saber.**

I was really too proud to say anything else. It’s not like he wouldn’t reject it openly if he’d decided not to train me anymore. About ten minutes later, he replied. 

**Come to the meditation room in one hour, and we’ll begin.** I sighed, and touched the kyber crystal that was hanging around my neck. I was gonna miss the necklace, because it reminded me of Matt.

The planet we were over that day was a pale blue-green and dotted with white wisps of cloud. I looked out at it, standing at the window, holding the crystal against my chest with its leather thong hanging down. When the door opened, I felt my heartbeat kick up. Kylo silently entered the room and stood behind me for a moment. It was gonna be weird, talking to him. My chest started to hurt, like a strange sharp pain. Despite the fact that I’d already decided to push through it, my heart was still a little broken that he’d decided against my wishes, gone back on his agreement. Even though he seemed to be unhappy he’d done it. Finally, he spoke.

“Apprentice.” His voice was low and quiet, assertive but not pointed. I sighed. 

“Hey.” I didn’t turn to look at him. 

“I’ve brought the tools you’ll need.” 

“Thanks.”

“Are you ready to begin?” Now I turned to look at him. My pain was probably pretty obvious on my face, but I wasn’t gonna let it run me into the ground. His face, on the other hand, was totally unreadable. Just like the good ol’ days again.

“Yeah,” I said quietly, and took a seat on my pillow. He went to the other pillow and placed the tray of parts on the floor between us. There were extra tools, mostly soldering stuff. I placed a hand on top of the pieces, fingers splayed. I shut my eyes and pressed the kyber crystal into my sternum. It felt instinctive, in that emotionally overburdened moment, to ask for a little guidance from the Force. But, I knew what I wanted. I just needed a little help finding it.

Kylo was silent as I sat there and pictured the saber I was imagining, and I could feel the strange cords of connective energy branching out from my palm and into the tray of stuff. When I opened my eyes, several pieces were all floating in the air. I watched them settle on the floor in front of me, and took my hand away from the box. My eyes flitted up to find Kylo’s, and he was looking at me with the barest hint of approval in his expression. 

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. There was nothing to say, not yet anyway. I looked down at my crystal in my hand, pulling it away from my chest. It emitted a gentle purple light that shone behind the Kalleran wirework. Sighing, I reached down and slowly pulled the thong off it. Then, I had an idea.

“Can I keep the metal on it, inside the saber?” I asked. It felt like keeping a little piece of Matt there. He considered for a moment. 

“I don’t see why not.” I nodded at him, and went about setting up the space. I towed the tray away and laid my parts out, much like he’d already shown me. I laid my tools to the side, giving everything its spot. Then I looked back at him.

“Where do I start?”

We built the saber in a few hours, and Kylo was very quiet. He was businesslike, direct, neither impatient nor hostile. Much as I wanted to give him some shit, there was never a moment where I felt the urge. It was strange to work beside him like that, but it was also kind of a relief. I didn’t want to focus on the dull ache in my heart, or the cloak of anger that lay around it waiting to defend. By the time our work was mostly done, both were less acute. I sat back to look at my work where I’d laid it on the floor to solder the last part on. It was black, sleek and slightly curved, with a few ridges. There was a really pleasant weight in the pommel, and at the other end too. It could easily be wielded with two hands or just one. It wasn’t fancy, because I wasn’t feeling fancy. I wanted something simple that would move with me, that fit well in my hand, that would become an extension of my body. A weapon that would become a familiar collaborator, the way I felt the crystal itself had become. 

The part of the hilt where the crystal would live was still exposed. I took the little shard in my hand again, for the last time. Except really, it would be there in the saber. But it felt strange to think of it not being around my neck anymore, and I had this really intense feeling of impending… change. Not doom, per say. Just change. Possibly cataclysmic change.

“Shit,” I murmured. 

“Everything alright?” Kylo asked. His tone was flat. 

“Yeah. Just… there’s a lot on my mind.” I heard him lift up the metal, and when I looked, he was holding it out in his hands, offering it to me to place its power source in. I glanced up at him. Our eyes met, and he seemed serious. More invested, more clearly present than he’d seemed so far. I guess it was a big moment for both of us, for different reasons. I looked back down, and carefully slid my crystal shard all wrapped in its golden web into the slot where it would be cradled. I slid the last piece over it, and gently took the soldering tool and tapped the four corners of the seam. The steel-like metal oozed into the cracks and settled there, cooling and turning black. I put the tool back on the ground. 

Kylo stood up slowly, and continued to hold the saber out to me, but he turned it so that the pommel was facing me. I inhaled, glancing up at him and then back at this thing that was now mine. This symbol of safety that was now also a symbol of power. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to feel at this moment. Probably euphoria, or a profound sense of grandiosity. Certainly not the heavy trepidation that was vibrating through me now. It was like… I dunno. I guess this didn’t feel like a fun toy anymore. It felt real as fucking hell. And that made it equal parts frightening and exhilarating. 

I stood up, and wrapped my hand carefully around the handle. It fit there-- fit into my palm, into my bones. _ Shit. This is wild. _ My eyes moved a little nervously back to Kylo’s. His serious gaze was intent on me now, a little more of his old and familiar focus back. He dropped his hands, left me to hold it. I turned it around, watching light glint off its surface.

“Go ahead,” he urged. My thumb hovered over the ignition button for a moment and I took a deep breath. Then, I turned it on.

The blade sang out of the hilt, the iconic thrum of it filling my ears, the brilliant purple color filling me with a strange sense of… validity. Like it really was a part of me, and now I was really, truly here. I felt my face crack into a smile, a real one, as a wave of vitality washed over me. Kylo’s eyes shone with its light, and there was a small smile even on his face, too. I looked at him, feeling just a little surge of pride. _ Okay, I guess I did do a pretty good job. _

Suddenly I saw that there was someone, a figure, standing behind him. I peered into the corner of the room, and froze.

It was Phasma. She was just standing there, staring at me in her armor but without a helmet. There was no expression on her face, in fact it was almost corpselike. Before I could say or even think anything, suddenly her entire upper half toppled off and onto the floor, arms flailing. My eyes flew open and I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream, instinctively shutting off the saber. Kylo’s face fell and his head whipped around to see what I was looking at. 

“What is it?” he asked, confused. He turned back to look at me with his brow knit, and I could tell that he didn’t see her. I slammed my eyes shut, shaking my head violently. “Aeon, what’s wrong?” 

“It’s not real,” I muttered to myself, my voice quavering. “It’s not real!” 

“What’s not real?” Kylo didn’t sound frightened or angry, just concerned. 

“Her corpse, it’s not really there, I know it’s not!” He made no reply, clearly not sure what to do. I dared to open my eyes, but she was still there, both halves of her. My heart pounded, and I dropped my saber as my hands started to shake. “I-- I can’t, Kylo she’s looking right at me!”

“It’s okay!” he said earnestly. “I can’t see it. But it’s okay.” Those pale, cold eyes bored holes in me despite her vacant expression. I could feel my brain starting to doubt, to wonder if she really _ was _ there. 

“Aeon,” Kylo said, approaching me. “Look at me.” My eyes flew up to his, his stare intent and very focused. Out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t tell if she was still there or not. I stood rigid, terrified, waiting to see her start crawling towards me or some other godawful thing.

“She won’t go away,” I told him, my voice turning small and quiet.

“I’m here, okay? Even if she doesn’t go away. I am here with you. She can’t hurt you.”

“I did it, Kylo. I killed her. What if she wants revenge?” I was totally sincere now, because when your brain is struggling hard enough it looks for reasons to believe what it sees. I realized dully that my light saber had activated something, like a trigger for my fears of becoming a murderer. 

“It’ll be alright no matter what she does, or what she wants.” In hindsight, he was dealing with my hallucination really well. It’s never about convincing someone what’s real and what isn’t. Much more important is showing people that they’re safe. He put his gloved hands on my shoulders carefully, not pressing or gripping too harshly. “I won’t let her hurt you.” 

“I…” Glancing back at the corner of the room where I saw she was still lying there, then glancing down at my light saber, then back at him, I swallowed. “I would like to leave this room, please.”

“We can go to the training hall,” he offered. “Bring your saber.”

“No!” Now that I’d identified the source of my terror, I didn’t want to make it worse.

“Aeon, remember what I said. I won’t let her hurt you.” He pressed his hands onto my shoulders just a little, enough to make me feel a little more present. “I’ll be right here.”

“O… okay.” I looked down at the floor where the saber hilt was laying. I felt profoundly fucking uncertain, in that moment. 

_ It’s okay, Aeon. Trust yourself. _ The voice was faint and familiar, in my mind. I realized it was Luke’s, encouraging me, and I felt a little sliver of steel creep into my resolve. Avoiding looking at the corpse that was not on the floor, I bent down and picked up the hilt. It still felt right, there was nothing unpleasant about holding it. In fact, it was comforting in my hand. 

“Let’s go down to the training hall, alright?” Kylo said, gesturing towards the exit. I nodded rapidly and scuttled right out. As soon as the door slid shut behind me, I took a huge breath of relief. Kylo stood beside me, watching me. “Better?”

“Yes,” I breathed. My knuckles were white, gripping my saber. He nodded at me, and canted his head in the direction we needed to go. I fell in beside him, heartbeat slowly returning to normal. 

\-----

A few hours later, I was sitting on the bench in the training hall catching my breath. Kylo had me going through the sequences I’d learned on the wooden swords, making sure I was getting familiar with the weapon’s weight and becoming hyper-aware of its blade. Luckily, the Force seemed to be extra helpful informing my instincts about that thing. My very personal connection to the crystal manifested in the blade, too. I won’t lie, it was pretty fucking awesome swinging it around. 

I didn’t tell him once we got there, but I’d seen Phasma standing-- eyes still dead and locked on me, but all in one piece-- standing outside the window of the training hall as soon as I turned my saber on. But I decided to just pay attention to him, to focus really hard on learning and getting familiar with that weapon in hopes that my fears would subside. It took me until I was sitting on that bench to realize that she wasn’t there anymore.

“You’re off to a good start with the saber,” Kylo was saying as he walked up to me. “You constructed it well. It suits you.” His tone was almost pleasant, and I realized I’d been too rattled by my hallucinations to mouth off at him. By that point, I wasn’t even that invested in antagonizing him anymore, honestly.

“Thanks,” I replied, a smile touching the corner of my mouth. “And thanks for helping me out earlier, in the meditation room. Most people don’t handle that very well.” 

“I’m glad I handled it well. I wasn’t sure.” He sat down beside me, resting his elbows on his knees. “Does that sort of thing happen a lot?”

“Not... a lot. Couple years before I got here, it happened a lot less. When things were at their worst a couple years before that, it happened constantly.” I looked at him, and his face was a little surprised.

“You’re full of stories, apprentice.”

“You have no idea.” I could still feel the pang of my sadness. But I missed the way we had been actually connecting, before it. And I was trying, really hard, to not give up on him just because he hurt my feelings, and possibly would imprison me on this ship if I wouldn’t work with him. Oof.

“Perhaps I’ll hear more of them, in time,” he said. For once, he wasn’t looking at me, just down at the floor. 

“I’d like to hear yours, too.” Now he looked at me. He seemed almost cautious, like he wasn’t sure why I was being nice to him.

“No you wouldn’t. They’re not nice stories.”

“I just told you I used to hallucinate terrifying shit all the time. Try me.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Fair enough. But not today.”

“That’s okay.” For a moment there was a silence that hung like a fog between us, and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, or what I should say. Honestly there was always a sense that we both really needed to talk about some shit that we just weren’t talking about, but it was worse than usual now because it wasn’t just this bizarre sexual chemistry or repressed investment in each other’s wellbeing or whatever. It had gotten deeper, and I had a bad feeling that meant it would be even harder to talk about. 

“Have you heard of a Sith Wayfinder?” he asked, looking at me once again. I felt my hackles rise a little._ Sounds like some shit JJ Abrams made up but you know, maybe it’s somewhere in the legends, I don’t remember. _

“Nope,” I replied a little tersely.

“There are only two. I’m looking for them,” he said. “They’re not easy to find.”

“I imagine not.” Even more terse than before.

“Aeon, you agreed to stay my apprentice. I’m just informing you what I’m doing. I want to be a better master than my masters were.” I sighed. _ Fuck. Okay. Fine. Put the angry away now, we’ll deal with it later. _

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still a little mad at you.” He looked like he was holding in a couple of different emotions, one maybe anger, one maybe indignation. 

“I’m not asking you to go with me, right now, either. When I find it.”

“Where does it lead?”

“Have you heard of Exegol?” he asked. _ Okay, now THAT sounds like some shit JJ Abrams made up. _ I shook my head. “It’s a planet in the Unknown Regions. It’s not on any map. It’s a stronghold of the Sith.”

“Not Moraband?” I asked, brow knit. “I thought that was the Sith homeworld, where the Sith Lords are buried.”

“It was, but it’s been abandoned for some time. It seems Palpatine wanted to be much harder to find than that,” he told me. I nodded slowly. 

“So he’s there, on Exegol?” 

“Wherever it is, yes.” Kylo looked at the floor again, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. “They Wayfinders are the only thing that can locate it.” _ Ah, yes. A Sith GPS. Sounds grand. _ I sighed. 

“So how’s your hunt going?” I asked, maybe a little too conversationally.

“Slowly. But it will continue until I find them both.” He looked back at me once again, and his expression was serious, and darker than it had been so far that day. “I will tell you this. I want you to come with me, to help me kill him. I won’t force you. But I will train you to be ready, when the time comes, even if you choose not to go.” _ Oh, so NOW you’re letting me have a choice again? _

“Okay.” In all fairness, it sounded to me like he wanted to make me feel capable of the fight. I wasn’t sure I would ever feel that way, but I couldn’t hold that goal against him even if it was a little self-serving, too. I mean, a teacher should want their student to be ready, right? 

“I won’t be easy on you, Aeon. I don’t know how long this hunt will take. You have a lot to learn, still.” 

“Okay.”

“You’ll train with me every single day until then.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t see the point in pushing back on him-- my old instinct to be unruly when he didn’t show me an overt amount of respect just wasn’t firing. Maybe my brain was just too confused and soupy after being mildly psychotic, that morning?

“You’re taking this seriously, right?” he asked, and I think he was getting exasperated by my broken record responses. 

“Yes.” I sat up a little straighter, suddenly feeling pointy. I glared a little at him, and ignited my light saber just to drive home my point. The blade was pretty close to his face. I guessed my remaining hostility would find little ways out for a while, too. “I am.” 

“Good.” His eyes never left mine while the purple glow of the weapon filled them, and when I turned it off they still smoldered. I realized my heart was beating in my throat. _ Fuck, so this is still a thing. Of course it is. He’s so fucking hot. _ I growled just a little, more to myself than anything. Heat was already pooling in my belly. _ If I can’t just be angry at him... _

“I know you take _ me _ seriously now, too, yanno,” I said. “You still wanna subdue me?” This was maybe the closest I’d ever gotten to just asking him if he wanted to fuck, to be honest. The embers in his eyes woke up, and they shone a little at me.

“I think what I like best about you, little one, is how I know you’ll never be subdued,” he purred. “But that makes it even more compelling to try.” My legs shivered. _ Okay, wow. That went straight to my loins. Fuck. _

“You know, there’s gotta be a better outlet for this than our training, Kylo,” I murmured. Our bodies were leaning closer together in almost imperceptible increments. “The stakes are pretty high these days. I’m not just a fun experiment for you anymore.” 

“You never were,” he said in a low voice. “You were always something special. I just didn’t know what to do with you at first, or if I could trust you.”

“I guess I could say the same about you.” _ You were just a character in a story, before I took this seriously. Before I realized just how real it was, _ I thought. But he was always a character I liked. Just, when he was being an actual jerk to me and I was afraid, I didn’t know what to do; my brain was so addled by the withdrawal that I’d reacted on instinct for most of my first couple of weeks here. Bad, broken, traumatized, self-destructive instinct. I was shocked it hadn’t turned out worse than it did. “I suppose we’re getting to know each other better, then.”

“There’s a lot I still want to know.” His face was looming over mine, now, and I could feel, very suddenly, that strange and magnificent arc of the Force between us. Like, it was there despite the fact that neither of us were using the Force at that moment, or even touching each other. Yet.

“Like what?” I was egging him on now, and somewhere in the back of my head the Voice of Reason, who’d been asleep for a hot minute, sat up, confused. _ What is going on right now? Aren’t you mad at him for making you stay here? Isn’t this still a bad idea? _ A smirk curled up over his face. 

“I know so much about what you can’t stand, what makes you angry. What you like, though? What you desire?”

“Aside from looking at the window at planets, you mean?” I grinned. “That was nice of you, by the way. To tell Matt to show me that window.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said smugly. His gloved hand was moving, and it came up to stroke my cheek, leather rubbing against my skin deliciously. I shuddered just a little.

“You know everyone can see in here, right?” I murmured. The Voice of Reason did not like that. _ Stop encouraging him! _ Kylo’s response was to lift his other hand in the air and close his fingers into a fist. The blast doors and window shields suddenly slammed down around the entire, empty hall. _ Shit. You’ve really done it now. _

“Better?” he asked, voice low and husky.

“Is this a terrible idea?” I asked him, my voice low and husky too, despite myself. “I mean, you’re trapping me here, technically.”

“I’d never throw you in the brig, if that’s what you mean.” Our faces were getting closer and closer. “Unless you wanted me to.”

“I mean, is it fucked up to feel this way about someone who won’t let you leave?”

“I wouldn’t approach you, if you refused to be my pupil. Or seemed less... interested.”

“How chivalrous.” Despite my dry sarcasm, I wasn’t stopping him from getting closer to me. The Voice of Reason groaned. _ When this blows up in your face, I’ll be here to remind you why you used to spend so much time in therapy, _ it said.

“I’m glad you chose to be here. You could have made the other choice. If I know you, if you really hated me that much, you’d have refused.” His leather-clad fingers trailed down my neck and my breath caught in my throat. “Hell, if you really wanted to leave that badly, I believe you’d have found a way out despite me.”

“Kylo…”

“Yes, little one?” he purred. I felt my insides melt and ooze hot down between my thighs.

“Kiss me.” I gave it like a direct order, and he wasted no time at all complying. His mouth landed on mine, and everything about the way he used it was different from how Matt kissed me. He was so much more assertive, so plainly full of desire, his hand on my neck putting just a little pressure against it while his tongue drew circles along the inner rim of my mouth. I moaned into him, and immediately put my hands in his tousled black hair and tugged on it. He growled and used his other hand to turn my body more towards him on the bench. I did him one better and hoisted myself up onto his lap, wrapping my legs around his torso and grinding into his hips where a certain hardness had already begun to form.

He took my bottom lip between his teeth and drew it out, one hand on my back pressing me hard up against him and the other gripping my face by the jaw. When he pulled away, one of his gloved fingers pried its way into my mouth. I whimpered as he rubbed it against my tongue, eyes drifting up to meet his as my entire body started to crackle with energy. His mouth fell open as he watched me slowly wrap my lips around the base of his finger and suck on it. 

“You’re filthy,” he murmured, pressing a second finger into my mouth and watching me do the same to both of them. He pushed them deep, almost down my throat until I gagged a little on them and my eyes watered. Then he drew them out. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“You thought I was innocent? Just because I enjoy romance too?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. He snarled at me, delighted, and stuck the tip of his fingers back in my mouth.

“Bite,” he commanded. I ran my tongue over the leather for a moment, defiant. He snarled again, this one less delighted, and hooked his fingers over my bottom teeth and dragged them downward so I had to look up at him through my eyebrows. “I said _ bite_, little one.” 

I took the tips of his gloves between my teeth that time, staring into his eyes, and he tugged the glove off and pulled it ungently out of my mouth. Immediately his warm fingers slid between my lips, and they were saltier than his gloves had been as he rubbed them from the tip of my tongue to the back of my throat over and over in systematic, incredibly lewd strokes. But I met his enthusiasm, the heat inside my body raging, curling my hips against his. 

“Shit,” he hissed. “I’d like that filthy mouth around my cock.” _ Of course, I would really like the same, _ I thought. I realized just how polar opposite his entire style was to Matt’s, how just plain nasty Kylo apparently preferred to keep things. I was a little giddy with the idea that I could experience both that and Matt’s intense, tender reverence. I was also still totally unsure if this was a huge mistake or not.

“I know you would,” I said as his fingers withdrew, smirking. “And I’d like that gorgeous chin covered in me, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?” His eyes flared at me.

“Is that a challenge or a reschedule?” he growled.

“I’m still trying to decide if I really want to do this or not.”

“What’s stopping you?” His nose pressed into my cheek as he said that, and he dragged his lips up to my ear.

“I have to q-question my impulses, um, when I can,” I stammered, distracted by the profound shiver that ran down my body at his hot breath on my ear. 

“This is far from an impulse, Aeon,” he murmured. Well, he wasn’t wrong. This was officially a sustained desire. Belligerent, even. But I was used to questioning every desire I had, and I was starting to see just how often I couldn’t tell an impulse from something else more permanent, more important. I ran my fingers through his hair.

“I just don’t want it to bite me in the ass. Or you, even.” He pulled back away from me now, hand on my cheek, eyes heavy with desire. 

“Would you like to wait, then?” he asked. He didn’t seem angry at all. The Voice of Reason took note, extremely surprised but nonetheless impressed. Looking into his eyes, I felt my lust shudder through me. I debated the answer, but just the fact that he’d _ asked _ was pushing me towards a strong ‘no, this is fine, actually, please fuck me stupid now.’ At the same time, a part of me was quick to remember that he’d betrayed my trust very, very recently. And no matter how much he regretted it, I needed to work a little harder to be sure, given that he’d done it. To be responsible, and lucid, and all that fun shit. (It’s not fun. It sucks. But in the end I’d never regretted it, once I’d learned to overcome the impulses and work with my brain. Which had been an exceptional struggle, since arriving on this ship.)

“Yes.” I inhaled slowly. “I mean, I’d also like to not. But let me be sure, first. That seems only fair, to both of us.” His dark eyes regarded me silently for a minute, and I couldn’t detect any sense of disappointment there, weirdly. I mean it would've been reasonable for him to be disappointed at least a little. But instead he seemed curious, and maybe even as impressed with me as I was with him? 

“Thank you for your honesty,” he said finally. His thumb stroked my cheek, gaze lingering over my mouth. “I’ll await your decision.” I couldn’t keep a smile from lurking at the corner of my mouth. 

“I’ll let you know.” My hands left his hair and trailed down over the layers of fabric that spanned his chest. 

“You have another decision to make,” he reminded me in a soft growl. _I wondered when he’d bring up Hux again._

“I know,” I said, glancing off at nothing in particular as the familiar sense of uncertainty I always felt about this topic came up inside my gut. “I think I need a deadline, or I’ll keep putting it off. When do you want me to have a decision made?” 

“Three days.” He looked back into my eyes, and there was a stern, almost teacherly look on his face. It said very clearly that it was time for me to face this particular problem. I swallowed my nerves and nodded at him. That seemed fair enough, to me. His hand trailed from my face down my neck, fingertips lingering over the place where he could feel my pulse. It sent a shiver down my spine. “I think we can finish for today.”

“Yeah.” I nodded again, and even though I wanted to kiss him, I didn’t. I just slid off his lap, and he rose to his feet before me. The blast shields all around the room began to open once more. “Same schedule tomorrow, right? And ad nauseum after that?” 

“Yes. I’ll expect you.” 

“Okay.” And I turned to head back to my quarters before I was tempted for another second to go back on my choice. I did glance back at him and throw him a smile, though. He looked surprised, and there was a ghost of one on his face, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these two, i s2g, but Aeon is trying to be smart since Kylo is being just a little bit of an idiot. they have their work cut out for them. 
> 
> thank you everyone for reading!! we're encroaching on the Actual Plot (tm) of RoS though I'd say these spoilers so far are very minor. i hope everyone's 2020 is off to a good start :D


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At least Uncle Luke still believes in me...

I was standing in sunlight, surrounded by tufts of green grass and foliage all over a rocky isle, the smell of the sea spray all around me. I knew immediately it was Ahch-To, but I had no idea why the fuck I was there, so that was disorienting. I blinked, shading my eyes with my hand, and looked around. 

“Hey, kid,” came Luke’s voice, and I turned to see him standing next to the charred remains of a tree. He wasn’t ghostly, he looked as solid as everything else around me. 

“Uh, hey,” I replied, thinking this was probably some kind of Force thing. “That’s where the sacred Jedi texts were at one point, right?” I pointed to the charcoal pile.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m kinda sorry you won’t get to look at them. I feel like you would’ve enjoyed that.” I only shrugged.

“I mean, I woulda, but I get a feeling they wouldn’t help me all that much with my goal anyway.”

“Maybe.” He stroked his beard. “How’s that going, by the way?”

“What, the redemption arc? I dunno. Kylo’s… opening up, a little,” I told him, shifting a little uneasily. _ Please don’t ask me about the details, though. _“I guess I’m also opening up a little. Seems to give him some food for thought, when I do.”

“Hm,” the old man replied. “That’s impressive. He doesn’t open up. Or, he didn’t to me.”

“I’m surprised too, honestly. Matt and I got close fast, but--”

“You and Matt?” he asked, and I immediately caught a weird vibe.

“Uh, yeah. Matt sought me out from the get-go because he wanted a friend, like, for the first time in forever.” 

“Interesting.” I eyed him.

“You gonna explain your cryptic shit, or?”

“I just…Matt’s very different from Kylo. Innocent, in so many ways, I’m sure you noticed,” he began. I nodded. “But Matt is harder to pin down than you think. Kylo always seemed straightforward, he was empty and he was angry. I’m sure he’s got stuff going on under that, everyone does. Matt took so much longer to get angry than Kylo did. But when he did, it always surprised me.” I felt my heartbeat start to pick up. I couldn’t even picture Matt getting angry. I mean, he’s a person, so of course he got angry. But I had so much of Kylo’s anger to deal with all the time. Matt was my reprieve from that, usually.

“Beware the fury of a patient man, type thing?” I asked.

“Something like that, yeah.” He regarded me for a moment. “Matt’s never been mad around you, has he?”

“Um.” I swallowed and shook my head. “Not yet.”

“That's good. I mean, I don’t know what he would have to be mad about exactly, but. He never practiced as much with the Force. Kylo may have learned to use it recklessly, but Matt avoided learning much at all once we got past the basics. But he’s still very strong with it.” 

“Is he like me, then? It comes up sudden and strong and scary?” I asked. 

“Yes, exactly. You’re learning, though.” 

_ Okay, this is weird new information that makes me slightly uncomfortable, _ I thought. _ I mean, maybe it shouldn’t, maybe it just means that Matt and I have even more in common than I thought. _

“Well, he doesn’t use it much, he tells me,” I told him. Luke nodded, considering.

“He’s aware of how destructive it gets. He’s got a big heart, I know he’s probably scared of that.”

“He does have a big heart,” I sighed, looking at the ground and thinking of how he’d held me the last time we’d seen one another, the sound of his voice when he said _ I love you, too. _ “Kylo told me the other day that he won’t let me leave. It hurt me bad, at first, because he promised I could still try to go home if I wanted to, before. That he would help me try. It was part of our agreement. Matt was so upset on my behalf.”

“It means Kylo sees just how powerful you could become, then,” the old Jedi pointed out. I looked back at him, strangely affirmed in hearing that. 

“I agreed to stay on as his apprentice anyway. He did give me the choice of that or being detained in my suite on the ship.”

“Why’d you stay?” Luke asked, raising a brow at me curiously. 

“I figure it’s my job to be, um, forgiving? I guess? It broke my heart when he told me, but he seemed almost as upset as I was. Like he knew he was breaking my trust, but he thought he had no other choice. I think he fully expected me to reject him, after that.” I felt a swelling inside my chest, remembering how crushed I’d been when he said it. How I still had the thought that maybe I shouldn’t have told him how I felt about the First Order... except that conversation had revealed more to me about Kylo Ren than anything ever had. I was surprised, as I stood there thinking about it, to feel tears welling in my eyes. “He’s so lost, Luke. He’s so lost, and he’s so alone.”

Luke’s eyes were shining, looking at me with a mix of feelings. The two I saw most clearly were a deep sadness, and hope.

“I knew I chose you for a reason.” He smiled at me. 

“Not just ‘cuz I’m crazy?” I joked, grinning back. He just winked back.

“Sorry to be all business, but has Palpatine tried to reach you again?” he asked, like he had a checklist of things he really wanted to talk about.

“No.” I rubbed my forehead. “But Kylo’s looking for him. He wants to kill him.”

“Wow. Good luck with that, kiddo.” He said it like he was talking to the Supreme Dingus himself, rather than to me.

“That is literally almost verbatim what I said.” I shook my head. “He wants me to come with him, to help I guess. I don’t know how the fuck I’m s’posed to help, but he says he’s training me intensively from now on. Even if I refuse to go. Which is fine, but... Palp said I would come to him. Maybe it’s my pathological disobedience, but I don’t really wanna go to him at all, since he said that.”

“I can’t blame you,” he groaned. “That does not bode especially well.”

“Should I go anyway?” 

“I don’t know, Aeon. You might end up bumping into him one way or another, in the end. Trust yourself, when the time comes.” _ I really hope I do not fucking bump into Sheev goddamn Palpatine before the end of anything except his existence in this cursed universe, but okay. _ I heaved a heavy sigh.

“Yeah. You’re right. I guess I’d prefer Kylo didn’t go after him at all. It sounds like a suicide mission. But if he’s gonna persist in being that fucking stupid, I wouldn’t want him to go alone.” I had been avoiding thinking too hard about the image of ol’ Palps shocking him to death with Force-lightning. I didn’t know how strong the ex-Emperor was, or how he’d survived, or what the fuck justification the writers had for bringing him back. I figured it wouldn’t be half as good as his return in the old legends books. But I wasn’t about to assume he would be easy to re-dump back in the trashcan where he fucking belonged. I felt my jaw working as I stared at the ground again, the fear of losing them-- Kylo and Matt and Ben, too-- starting to settle into some deep crevice of my brain.

“You love him, don’t you?” My heart stopped, and I stared at Luke.

“What?”

“Oh, come on, don’t play dumb. It’s not about romance-- I mean, maybe it’s about romance, I don't know-- but I think you always loved him. Before I brought you here.” His smile was a little wry, but mostly it was bordering on joyful. I felt myself turn red. He was talking about why Kylo had been so important to me as a character in the first place. 

“I… yeah. I’m not the only one, I’m pretty sure.” _ The Kylo fans are legion, in fact. _

“Oh, I know. But you still love him now, even after he acted the way he did, after finding out more about him.” The old man seemed heartened by this idea in a way that struck me. The tears edged back into my eyes. 

“Maybe even more,” I murmured. “I don’t wanna fail you, Luke. I don’t wanna fail him.”

_ I don’t wanna fail myself. _

“I have faith in you,” the Jedi replied. “You’re very strong, Aeon. You can only get stronger.” I just looked at him, trying to believe what he said, searching for how to reply. 

Before I could come up with anything, though, my eyes flew wide open and I was staring into the darkness of my room on the Supremacy. Tears were running down my face and wetting the pillow under my head. I breathed heavily, trying to process that strange dream-convo with my unofficial other teacher. _ Jesus. That was a lot at once. Luke really likes to hit all the hard questions, doesn’t he? _ I shifted under my covers, trying to turn around and curl up on my side. 

There, on the other side of the bed, I thought I saw a terrifyingly shriveled old man in a black cloak. _ Palpatine. _

I screamed, horrified, and before I knew it my light saber was in my hand and slicing through one of the darkened lamps beside my bed. As soon as its purple light fell across the room, though, I saw nothing. I panted, looking around everywhere to try and be sure I was alone. Then I looked at the weapon in my hand, which had been lying over on my desk when I’d gone to bed. Shakily, I turned it off. _ Great, now I’m jumpy and also can be armed in the blink of an eye. I better be careful. _

Out of nowhere, my datapad dinged on the other bedside table. I glanced over at it, brow knit. When I opened it up, it was a text from Matt.  
  


**You okay?** My brown wrinkled. 

**Yeah, I’m fine, why?**

**I just felt something.**

**Oh. Just a nightmare. Don’t worry too much.**

**I always worry.**

**You’re sweet. I’m really fine, just wide awake now.** I smiled down at the screen, my heart getting gooey for a minute. It took him slightly longer to reply, this time.

**Do you want to come sleep here maybe?** I couldn’t stop a huge grin from breaking out over my face. 

**Now?**

**Yeah, if you want.**

**I’ll be there in ten minutes!**

**Oh, okay!! See you soon!!**

**  
**I leapt out of bed, turning the remaining lamps on as I threw a couple of extra clothes and things in the leather satchel we’d got on Kaller. I wasn’t looking forward to telling someone about how I’d hacked my lamp in two with a laser sword, so I figured I’d put it off until later.

It was 0100 hours when I arrived at the Supreme Leader’s suite. The door opened for me, as though it knew who I was. 

“Hi,” said Matt, who was standing shirtless in black training pants in the breakfast nook. He’d managed to even put the blonde rinse in his hair before I got there, which I thought was cute. He just wanted to be himself around me, I figured. Though, his glasses weren’t on. I was starting to suspect he didn’t really need them, just liked them. There was a datapad on the little table beside him, and it looked like he’d been sitting there writing on it just moments before I entered. I smiled.

“Hi Matt.” I floated over to him and immediately leaned up on my tiptoes to kiss him. It was gentle, nonurgent, sweet. His hands slipped under my arms and around my waist easily, comfortably. I noticed more and more how much he was getting used to being sensual and tactile with me. Which was great, of course.

“What was your nightmare about?” he asked me as he slipped the satchel off my shoulder and laid it on the table. 

“What else?” I asked, sighing. 

“Oh, Palpatine, huh?”

“Yeah.” I wanted to tell him about the dream with Luke, an urge that came out of nothing more or less than how close we’d become. But immediately I felt a little uneasy, remembering the old Jedi’s words about Matt’s anger. I also realized that, since we’d never spoken about him before, I had no idea how Matt actually felt about his old master. So I banished the impulse to overshare, for the time being.

“Has he been trying to find you more since last time?” the blonde asked.

“No. I’m just paranoid that he will, and it’s starting to mean I see him places where he isn’t. Literally.” His hands came and took both of mine, standing close and listening intently to me.

“Kylo mentioned in his note that you saw Phasma the other day, which I think I felt. But he said he got you calmed down.”

“Yeah, that happened,” I groaned, sighing again and grimacing. “That was… a lot. He did help me out, though.”

“That’s good.”

“He’s been on his best behavior, I have to say.” _ Like, to an extent that is still mildly shocking to me, _ I thought. Because we’d been about thiiiis close to fucking like animals in the training hall. Oof.

“He better be,” Matt said, frowning. “I’m still mad at him.” I laughed.

“Don’t be,” I urged, reaching up to stroke his face fondly. “I appreciate it, but it’ll be alright in the end. He did say he figured I would’ve found a way out somehow, even if he tried to keep me here.”

“Well, he’s right about that, isn’t he?” he asked, grinning.

“Probably,” I affirmed. I am really fucking pathologically disobedient, y’all. Just ask any of my psychiatrists.

“My fierce one,” Matt cooed, leaning down to press his forehead onto mine. “Thank you for letting me comfort you, the other day. I didn’t know if it would help, but…”

“It helped in more ways than I expected. Thank you.”

“What d’ya mean?” he asked, canting his head. _ Oh my God, I love it when he does that. _ I tugged him towards the bed, ready to lay down and snuggle.

“I um, well. I dunno how to explain it, exactly,” I said. “It was like… I was really in a bad way, obviously. My brain tries so hard to keep me from actually feeling how much my emotions hurt, when I get like that. Which means I can’t feel my body much at all.” He climbed onto the huge bed and pulled me with him, sitting up against the headboard with pillows behind him. I curled up, throwing my legs over his lap as he wrapped one strong arm around me.

“Maker, that sounds terrible,” he said. He took one of my hands and stroked it with his thumb gently.

“It’s bad, but not as bad as it would be if I kept feeling those things. But when you were there, I felt safe and cared for. When you touched me, I could feel it-- like it felt nice, but feeling it also let me feel how sad and in pain I was. I felt so fucking betrayed, and trapped, and alone. But you were also making me feel good, which kinda let me feel both at the same time.” I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and I could tell he was fascinated and surprised.

“I didn’t know I was doing that,” he mumbled, turning pink. 

“I didn’t know it would happen like that, either. I’ve never had that happen before, though I know other people who’ve talked about it. It…” I paused, searching for the right words. “It was like magic. To feel safe while also feeling so hurt. To feel alive when I’d been feeling dead for three days. I felt the Force all around me, and between us, too.”

“Maker,” Matt said softly. “You were in bed like that for three days?”

“Yeah, just about. Before you showed up.”

“Kylo told me what he’d said to you, and also that he hadn’t heard from you at all, and I could tell he was worried. There were no outgoing orders from the mess to your room, either. Nobody had seen you for a while. I didn’t know it was because you were holed up that entire time.” He sighed, leaning down to kiss the top of my fuzzy head. I felt myself get warm, realizing that Kylo was worried about me after I vanished like that. Not especially surprised that he didn’t come find me himself, since he was both guilty and proud. But still. 

“Yeah. I should’ve gone to the medical bay, but that’s the funny thing about depression. It doesn’t matter what you should be doing. You _ can’t _ really do anything. Every time it gets bad, I’m just lucky I have someone around to help.” 

“That happens a lot?” Matt asked, brow creasing.

“Not all the time. It’s unpredictable, like everything else,” I told him.

“Mm.” He rubbed his soft pout over my head. I sighed, and sagged into him. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you hun?”

“I mean, yeah,” I sighed. “But it’s cool. Kylo keeps getting to hear about my past in our lessons, lately. Ever since Dagoba.”

“He told me about the vision, and about the guy who hurt you in the past who you saw.” 

“He did?” I asked, sitting upright and looking at Matt quizzically. “Why?”

“I think he mostly thought I should know. Since we’re… doing this, yanno? I think he’s also worried about you in general. He talks about how he’s trying to be a better teacher a lot these days. He hasn’t confided in me this much in a long time.” He had a small, soft smile on his face, like he was proud of Kylo for this.

“Did he tell you about how he wants to kill Palpatine, and he wants me to help him?” I asked, despite the fact that I was blushing to hear this information. 

“He did. He said he just wants you to feel ready. If you don’t feel ready when the time comes, I think he’s gonna feel like he didn’t do his job,” he replied.

“If I don’t feel ready, it’ll have nothing to do with how well he trains me,” I grumbled. “I just don’t _ want _ to fuckin’ meet Palpatine. I’ll either make myself do it anyway, or I won’t.” I looked away from him, thinking about what Luke had said. I was pretty sure the only person who could make me trust myself was me. Though, knowing how to wield a light saber would really help, of course. “What d’you think about his plan?”

“I think it’s rash as fuck, and it doesn’t surprise me at all. I don’t love it, but I can’t exactly fault Kylo’s logic,” Matt replied, shrugging. My hand wandered over his bare shoulder, rubbing his muscles gently.

“Fair enough,” I sighed. “I just… it’s Palpatine, man. I hate it, but I’m scared of that guy. I’m scared of how he’s a real actual no-bullshit Sith lord. I’m scared of how there’s no Jedi left to help deal with that.”

“The Jedi wouldn’t help much,” he growled, rolling his eyes. _ Holy shit. Is that… is that the tiniest bit of Matt’s temper? _I looked up at him.

“You don’t think so?” 

“No, I know so.”

“Oh, I guess you were actually trained by one. That’s fair.”

“The Jedi the ones who allowed the Emperor to rise in the first place. They missed something big, and the whole burden of fixing it got passed down to the next generation. And then to the next.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t fair.”

“I know you three prolly had a lot of pressure on you, too,” I said softly, stroking his cheek. “You, Ben, and Kylo.”

“Too much.” He looked down at me, expression as serious as I’d ever seen it. “That’s why Ben never grew up. I had to take over, to try and take care of him. We never really had a childhood.” I felt my heart crack, thinking about that. About sweet, gentle Mattau showing up to care for Ben because his parents were so busy, so far away, even though they loved him. About the Force being so strong that it frightened Matt, and Han, Luke, maybe even Leia. And nobody really there to comfort him or teach him about it. Until Luke tried to revive the academy, of course. _ But by then, I bet Kylo had already started to show up to protect Matt and Ben. Shit, this makes sense, as a timeline for their system. _

“I… well, I don’t feel like I had a childhood either. For different reasons,” I said. “I’m sorry you feel the same.”

“It’s okay,” he sighed, and his hand stroked my back. “It’s in the past, now. I try not to think about it too much.” I gazed at him for a moment, just letting the new information sink in. “What happened to you, as a kid? Not that you have to tell me, I’m just curious.”

“I had to sorta parent my parents. They weren’t very emotionally mature, and I felt like I had to be the one who kept my cool, after all the fighting I tried to do didn’t work. That’s the anger not being powerful thing we talked about once. I fought and fought and got so, so mad. It made everything worse, so I turned into the stoic one. The ‘fearless’ one. To make myself feel safe, because their fights scared me. I was so young. So I turned that fear into something else.” I swallowed, and shook my head. “Mostly pride. Defiance came out in other parts of my life. I can barely remember. I can’t even see their faces still, even though I’ve been playing my songs and trying to remember.” 

I felt Matt’s hand come up to stroke a tear off my cheek I hadn’t even realized was falling. There were no others on its heels, just the one. Like I couldn’t remember enough to even cry about, anymore. Just enough to remember how I felt, and piecemeal the story of my past together from it. It was bizarre, how far away that feeling felt. But I’d decided to trust Luke. 

“My fierce little thing,” he whispered. He kissed my forehead, and then he leaned down and took my lips with his own in his gentle but intense way. I shivered as his tongue swirled around mine, and his hand tugged my jaw upward so he could angle more fully against my mouth. _ Damn, he really is getting comfortable!! _I let my old feelings, all the feelings I had about my childhood and my past, slip away in the tide of his deepening kiss. 

“Oh, Matt,” I breathed when he pulled away, my hand rubbing his chest. “I want you real bad.”

“I want you too,” he murmured in reply. “But it’s so late. You and Kylo both have to be up to train, right?”

“Yes,” I groaned. “Every day, until he finds the Emperor.”

“You’re gonna be tired enough as it is.” _ Joke’s on you, dude. I never sleep too much when I get laid, and I’m full of manic energy the day after, too! _ But, true as that usually was, I knew Kylo didn’t have the same advantage. 

“I hate that you’re right, but you are.” I sighed. Fucking responsibility, man.

“We can do something tomorrow?” he suggested.

“Okay.” He smiled.

“Do you… do you want to sleep naked, though? It feels so good to have your skin against mine.” I blushed. 

“Absolutely.” I quickly tugged off the clothes I’d donned earlier, and he slipped out of his pants as well. His eyes lingered on me, before he shifted away and slid under the covers. He held the blanket up like a tent he was inviting me to crawl into. I giggled and did just that, snuggling up next to him as he wrapped his arms around me. The touch of his skin sent tingles of warmth and joy through me.

“This is okay, right? Us not--”

“Of course it is, goober,” I cut him off, turning my head just enough to plant a kiss on his neck. “I love every moment with you, with or without sex.”

“Oh, good,” he replied in a tiny voice, and I could feel him get warm as he blushed. _ God he is the cutest thing that ever drew breath. _

“Sleep well, love,” I mumbled, already starting to settle into the cozy nest of his bed, his arms.

“You too, Aeon,” he whispered back, nuzzling my neck with his nose. We drifted off in short order, and I’m glad to say I had no Force-influenced dreams, this time. Or any dreams at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just some dang old character development for y'all, plus wholesome snugglin'. :D


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo also sucks it up and keeps trying.

I awoke to the sensation of a gentle hand on my shoulder, shaking me just a little. Slowly and reluctantly my eyelids peeled themselves open. 

“It’s time to wake up, little one,” came a deep cooing voice, and I blinked.

“Kylo?” I asked groggily, reaching up to rub my eyes. His face, framed by dark hair, slowly came into focus. He seemed calm, even tender in that moment. His thumb massaged my shoulder gently before he took his hand away. He was already dressed-- _ hang on. _ I looked down at the shoulder he’d been touching, and realized it was bare. I was still nude. “Fuck!” I yelped, and even though the covers were preserving my modesty still, I tugged them upwards towards my chin in embarrassment. “You better not have looked at me naked!”

“No, I didn’t,” he assured me, waving his hands to placate me. There was a humored smile that was trying to come over his face, but he was working very hard not to let it.

“You swear?”

“I swear, really. Matt’s the one who woke up and got out of bed.”

“If you’re lying--”

“I’m not, Aeon. Don’t you trust me?” He realized a moment too late what he’d said. I looked at him, watching his face fall a little.

“I’m working on it,” I replied softly, honestly. I kept any accusatory tone out of my voice. I mean, I really was. He paused, then let out a slow breath. His face looked surprised, maybe relieved. Sitting up a little straighter, he nodded at me.

“I’ll go ahead to the meditation room, so you can get dressed,” he said. Then he rose, and vanished through the sitting room of the suite and out the door. I looked after him for a moment and sighed. 

“Oh, Kylo. I see how much you’re trying,” I groaned at nobody. I slid out from under the covers and went about preparing to be a person. 

When I entered the meditation room, the light on the other side of the rippling glass wall was much brighter than usual. I walked around it through one of the openings, and gasped. Outside the window was a planet that was entirely made of ice, illuminated by its sun so clearly that you could see the massive cracks in its surface like veins running over it, vacant rivers between mountain ranges and huge swaths of patchy gray or streaks of bright white. I went to the glass immediately, staring down at it. _Jesus, every single time there’s a new planet outside it’s like I’ve never seen one before. They are all so incredibly beautiful!_ I sighed, unable to keep from smiling a little. I’d heard Kylo stand up from his pillow when I entered, so when I found it in me to turn away from the view I saw him standing nearby. His face was soft, nearly a smile on it as he gazed at me with a look that was incredibly like fondness. I felt my cheeks get warm, since he didn’t bother to change his expression at all when our eyes met. 

“Which planet are we above?” I asked him, looking back out so I didn’t have to get progressively more embarrassed.

“Vandor,” he said. I couldn’t recall anything canonical about that name. “It’s largely unpopulated.”

“An ice desert,” I mused, and I wondered how it must look from down on its surface. 

“Why do you love looking out at them so much?” He seemed curious. 

“I dunno,” I said, tracing along the glass over where one of the massive cracks trailed through the ice. “When I was a kid, I loved to look at pictures of planets and moons, nebulas and stars. They seemed too magical to be real, but they were actually out there.” I remembered a poem, suddenly, one I’d always liked. I hadn’t been thinking about the poems from back home that I’d read at all since my arrival, and it was strange that it came flooding back right then. But I was so compelled by it (or maybe by the fact that I could remember it at all) that I just recited it out loud on the spot.

_ “_ _On foot _

_ I had to cross the solar system _

_ before I found the first thread of my red dress. _

_ I sense myself already. _

_ Somewhere in space hangs my heart, _

_ shaking in the void, from it stream sparks _

_ into other intemperate hearts.” _

I sighed, realizing as I heard the words in my own voice how extremely, almost uncannily fitting it was for my current predicament. My hand fell from the cold glass, and I looked back at Kylo. I don’t even know how to describe the look on his face. It might’ve been something akin to awe, but I’d never seen him look like that before, so I was reluctant to call it that. “It’s a poem,” I explained hastily. 

“Did you write it?” 

“No, I believe the lady who wrote it was named Edith… Södergran?” Her Swedish last name was harder to remember than her short little poem, but I was pretty sure that was it. “I used to read a lot of poetry. I wrote some too, but it was terrible.”

“I would like to hear your words,” he said quietly. I felt my heartbeat pick up speed- that weird flush of shame that everyone who writes poetry these days seems to feel rose up and turned my cheeks bright red. 

“No, please, it’s really bad.”

“How would I know? I don’t read poetry.” He was smirking a little but good-naturedly. _ Well, he does have a point, _ I thought. _ Who knows how good space-poetry is anyway? _

“Maybe one day,” I muttered, looking away from him. “Were we gonna do a lesson?” 

“Yes, though I think our time here will be short today. You need more saber training than anything else.”

“Agreed.” I was relieved to not be lingering on the subject of poetry anymore.

“What emotion have you been feeling the most lately?” he asked. Okay, maybe I wasn’t relieved, because even though in the context of talking about the Force it made sense, I knew the answer and it made me uncomfortable. I inhaled slowly, rubbing my forehead.

“Fear.” I hated saying it out loud, but damn. After seeing Phasma the way I had, and being so strung out about Palpatine, and about Kylo going to try to kill Palpatine, and about whether or not giving the order that would end Hux’s life would plunge me headfirst into the dark side... that was it. I looked back at him, crossing my arms uncomfortably.

“Why?” His expression was even, not surprised or judgmental.

“Because of everything that’s been happening lately, pretty much.”

“How about when you were practicing with your saber yesterday? How did you feel then?” I pondered this question a little longer.

“I felt… I don’t know if I had a feeling. I know I was focused on learning.”

“You didn’t get frustrated with yourself very much, did you notice that?” His eyes were shining, like he was waiting for me to figure out something. 

“Now that you mention it… no, I didn’t notice that. But you’re right,” I replied. 

“You seemed very confident, by the end of the day,” he pointed out. _I bet you think that, seeing as we made out and almost banged right there._ But he had a point. I’d felt confident-- not just enough to tell him to kiss me, but enough to tell him to stop, too. I felt a little smirk creep over my face.

“Yeah, okay. Fair enough. I was feeling pretty confident.” 

“You seemed to know your strength, and when you met a new challenge you met it comfortably.” I didn’t know if he was referring to the actual training, or our little moment afterwards. Technically, it was true of both.

“Damn. You’ve really been teaching me well lately, haven’t you?” I said, the grin breaking out fully on my face. For a split second, he looked almost embarrassed.

“I have endeavored to do so, yes.”

“Have I been a good student?” I mean, I thought I had. I’d been trying to. But now that I’d gone and told him how I felt about our dynamic, I wanted to hear his take.

“Exceptionally,” he replied, and I saw that little ember of hunger light in the back of his eyes. _Christ, he turns me on so fuckin’ much. Still. Of course._

“I’m proud of us,” I commented. “We’ve come a long way since Dagoba, haven’t we?” I saw something pass over his face then, a strange feeling I couldn’t pin down.

“Indeed.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to encourage you to find an emotion that will help you with your saber training, as I plan to introduce armed droids today.”

_Oh, shit. Actual floating droids are gonna fire little zaps at me?_ Instead of feeling anxious, I felt excited. All the Form 3 stuff I’d been going over with him lately was finally about to get real.

“I can think about that. I’m game to start now, though,” I said, and he must’ve seen the light in my eyes. He stood up straighter. 

“Alright. Let’s go down, and see what you can do.” 

\-----

I was gonna say I don’t toot my own horn much, but that’s not entirely true. In just the right phase of mania, I toot my own horn plenty. 

But against the droids in the training hall that day, I fuckin’ _ killed _ it. 

“Yes!” Kylo was calling out to me, starting to get excited himself. “That’s it! Stay with it. Feel the Force!” I brandished my saber against a total of three little orbs of metal that spun and flitted through the air, taking turns firing little bursts of energy at me. It was like the blaster version of a BB gun, basically. They stung pretty hard if they hit you, but it wasn’t debilitating. In fact, it kinda got on my nerves when it happened, and I was just channelling that into my focus.

In my head, of course, the droids were Phasma, Hux, and Palpatine respectively. They were all coming for me and for Kylo, and Matt and Ben by extension, and I wasn’t having it. I felt the hum of my weapon in my very bones, deflecting their shots one by one and then in a flurry as they came. When the next one I missed zapped me unkindly in the shoulder, I growled at it.

“Focus!” Kylo reminded me. I didn’t need that particular reminder, though, as I stopped trying to watch all three droids move at the same time and instead let my eyes look past them. I took in the environment, unfocused, feeling the threads of energy that connected me to each object in the room. As per usual, the arc between me and Kylo was powerful. But it felt like a wave I was surfing rather than a line that was tugging at me.

The very next shot that came I sent with a flash back to the little machine that fired it, and it powered down and drifted to the floor. The other two hovered ominously, moving in lazy circles in the air, swinging closer and then soaring higher above. Kylo’s eyes were intent on me from the sidelines.

_Pew-pew!_ Both the droids sent blasts at me at once, and in a fluid motion I swung my saber through the air and sent each shot careening back where it came from. One was a direct hit, and that droid powered down too. But the last one came zooming towards me, firing a burst. I spun the weapon to deflect them, sending shots all around and into the blast-proof walls of the training hall. It just keep coming, kept firing. I snarled, and plunged towards it on instinct, my purple blade singing.

The droid fell in two smoking parts to the ground. I caught my breath, and powered the saber off. When I turned to look at Kylo, there was a smirk a mile wide on his face.

“Well done, apprentice,” he said, giving me a few short claps. I returned his smirk in kind.

“Thanks,” I said, sauntering over to him.

“Perhaps I’ll have you train against troopers, next.”

“Troopers?” I asked, suddenly unsure. “Like, flesh-and-blood humans who could die if I cut them in half?”

“Only against blaster fire,” he clarified. “Flesh-and-blood humans are less predictable than droids.” That made me feel better, mostly.

“I thought the droids were programmed to a randomized sequence?”

“They are, but you felt the greater patterns in them, didn’t you? Their programming has limitations.” 

“Huh. Yeah, I did.” I thought about it, and even though I couldn’t tell you what patterns they’d settled into, at some points I’d felt like it was almost too easy to predict their next shot. The only time that didn’t work was when I was thinking too hard, and lost the flow. I looked up at Kylo again, and his smoldering look had drawn closer to me. 

“Flesh and blood has its own dance, of course,” he said in his low voice that sent shivers up my spine. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Who knows that better than us?” I was being both coy and overt, because of course I was.

“No one, I think,” he growled, stepping even closer.

“When do we spar, then, big boy?” I challenged.

“Tomorrow, little one. I want you to be ready.”

“I’m ready now.” I looked up at him, and there was fire in both of our eyes.

“I know you are,” he cooed, reaching up with a gloved hand to run his fingertips across the front of my neck. _Fuck. If I can’t fuck him, at least I can fight him... Maybe I should just accept how much I want it. Uuugh._

“Then why not now?” This conversation wasn’t supposed to devolve into a thinly veiled metaphor for sex, but it was too late.

“Because I am still your Supreme Leader,” he said. “And tragically, I have other business to attend to this afternoon. I want you to stay here and continue training with the droids while I’m gone.” I felt my heart pounding, wanting nothing more than to make him late for whatever meeting he was supposed to be in later.

“Are you always such a hateful tease?” I asked him, narrowing my eyes despite the fact that I was still smirking.

“Oh,” he breathed, leaning close to my ear. “Always.” 

_ Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK. _

He stood up straight then, and withdrew his hand. He watched my face boil with frustration, with desire, with just a little bit of rage. I was so turned on that it was literally starting to piss me off, but not in the same way that it used to. I felt denied, like he was withholding, and as much as I hated it… I also _ loved _ it. He stepped back away from me slowly, his grin insufferable. I tried to stare holes into him.

“Carry on, my apprentice.”

“For how long?” I asked, even as I heard half a dozen little droids awaken from their storage and emerge into the air behind me. 

“Until you can’t take it anymore.” _Oh, fuck._ With that, he turned and exited the hall. I sucked in a long breath, every part of my body alive and run through with energy. Then I felt a little tug on my senses, and turned on my lightsaber as I spun and deflected the first shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't help it, I LOVE THEIR SEXUAL TENSION
> 
> this one's a little short but it be aight. more Matt up next :) thank you everyone for commenting and making my day all the time!


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt gets the love he deserves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is smut in this chapter!

As promised, I went up to Matt’s room that night after I’d grabbed something to eat. My day in the training hall had been tiring, but I hadn’t actually drilled myself to exhaustion despite Kylo’s Big Dom Mood having ordered it. I wanted to have energy for Matt, and I wanted to have energy for sparring with the big boy the following day, too. 

When I got there, freshly changed from my training clothes into full butch regalia of a button-down and trousers, the tall blonde gave me a huge smile.

“Oh,” he said, bringing his hand up to his mouth in this sheepish way as his eyes raked over me. “You look so handsome, today!” I felt my heart threaten to puff up and explode.

“Thanks,” I replied, sliding right up to him and smiling as I put a hand flat on his chest. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt and black pants, and really did it matter what he was wearing? It was always gonna be perfect. “And thanks for having me over again.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” he mumbled, excited and blushing. “I uh, I wanted to… well. I wanted to talk to you about something.” 

“Really?” I asked, canting my head in accidental mimicry of him. “About what?”

“Um, well, it’s… ah, it’s about, clothes?” It sounded like he was confused by his own statement. “It’s about more than clothes, but, um. It starts with clothes.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Alright,” I nodded slowly. “What about clothes?” 

“It, ah. Okay. This is weird. I… do you remember that time like, forever ago, where we talked about how you feel about gender and stuff?” he asked.

“Yeah, I remember. I painted your nails.” _ How could I forget? _

“Yeah! Then. Um, well, so. After we bought clothes and talked about all that stuff, I, um. I just started thinking about it a lot.” I felt a tiny little smile try to push its way onto my face. _ Is Matt about to tell me that he wants to try on some girly clothes? _

“Uh-huh?” I encouraged him.

“So, ah, well, anyway. I thought about it, and I think-- I decided to try some stuff out.” 

“Oh really?”

“Um, yes. And I was wondering if you would, um, I mean, if you wanted to, I dunno. If I could try them on with you?” He was turning redder by the minute, rubbing the back of his head adorably. The smile on my face broke out instantly.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, almost jumping with excitement. _ I was right! Matt’s gonna try on cute girly clothes with me! _ “Yes, I’d love that!”

“Oh, okay!” He looked surprised that I’d agreed, and beamed at me. “I got some stuff in the bedroom.” 

“Let’s go!” I grabbed his hand and towed him into the room in question, where one of the closet doors was open and a handful of garments were strewn about. I immediately took to the bed so I could pull off my boots. “Where should I sit? What should I do?”

“Can you, um, okay. Can you turn around while I change?” he asked, so bashful and blushy that I wanted to just die on the spot. 

“Of course, anything,” I cooed, standing up one more time to kiss his cheek before I climbed back onto the bed and sat pointedly facing away from him. I wanted to jump for joy. Seeing Matt try things out that made him happy was just one of the best fucking things ever, to be honest. I bobbed up and down on the mattress, humming to myself as I listened to the sounds of him moving stuff around, cloth swishing, a hanger being returned to the closet. I almost turned to look when the noises died down.

“No peeking!” came his voice with a giggle. My head snapped back away from him.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just-- I can’t wait to see!”

“Okay. You can look, now.” Immediately I spun around on the bed.

Matt was standing by the closet mirror, slouching bashfully and looking at his toes-- which were protruding from beneath the floor-length hem of a maroon colored dress. It was made of soft fabric that hung down from his hips in a narrow, languid drape. It was sleeveless, with a broad neck like a tank top that stretched low over the familiar muscles of his chest. It was simple, and unbelievably gorgeous on him. 

“Oh, Matt,” I sighed, putting my hands up to my cheeks as my mouth hung slightly open. He glanced up at me, and immediately turned bright red and looked back at his feet again. I climbed off the edge of the bed, taking careful steps toward him, looking him up and down over and over. The gentle, unassuming fabric was the perfect sweet compliment to his muscled body, his incredible arms and torso shown off by its unfussy elegance. When I finally approached him, he glanced back up at me.

“How is it?” he asked timidly. My eyes roved over him, one hand reaching out to touch the soft garment against his abdominals. 

“You look so incredibly beautiful, Matt.” I was in awe, I won’t lie. He just looked so fucking lovely in that dress. I didn’t know if he could get any redder, but he certainly tried. He shut his eyes, lashes splayed out over his cheeks.

“Maker,” he mumbled. I took one of his hands in mine and stepped back away from him, coaxing him into moving his arms and loosening up. Which he did, haltingly, and pinched the skirt with his other hand to lift it off the floor and sway it around a little. I’m pretty sure my face was like, the absolute stereotype of the love-struck little half-smile. He spun around, pulling his hand away from mine only to take it right back as he completed his turn. _ Oh my GOD he is SOOOoOOOOOOo cute I don’t think I can handle it. _ “It doesn’t spin, really, but. I like it.”

“Where’d you get it?” I asked dreamily.

“Same place I ordered yours from.”

“I thought that fabric looked familiar. And they’re both dark red.”

“Yeah,” he said, giggling. “I really like it.”

“Now we can both wear matching red dresses,” I noted, beaming.

“Oh yeah, we could!” This delighted him. I was like, actually floating in space I’m pretty sure. I was so enraptured, y’all. His body was pretty much the ideal of Big Strong Man beauty, I guess. I wasn’t really drawn to the idea of manliness specifically, but I mean. I was (obviously) drawn to his physical form. Something about draping it in slinky dark red fabric was so stunningly attractive that I wasn’t even sure how to speak. “Um, Aeon? You okay?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “You’re so… God, you’re like, surreal. Ethereal, maybe. Gorgeous, definitely.” 

“Wow,” was all he said in reply, and he stepped a little closer to me, drawing me in towards him. Despite his bashfulness, he was looking at me with big, sweet, and very dark eyes. 

“Come here,” I murmured, crooking a finger at him. He leaned down and I took his face in both my hands and planted my lips on his. He gave a muffled little sound, clearly excited by my assertiveness. I sucked on his lower lip, taking it between my teeth gently, and he let out another sound which was less quiet. My body was starting to warm up, my lower belly starting to tighten. His hands moved around my torso, pushing me up against him. As the kiss deepened and I traced paths all over inside his mouth with my tongue, I felt his arousal very, very plainly through the thin dress. “Matt, can I touch you?” I groaned into his mouth.

“Mkay,” he breathed, but pressed our mouths together again immediately, enthusiastically. I reached down with one hand to palm his erection through the fabric, gently pressing along his length and devouring the moan he instantly let loose. I broke away and tugged him towards the bed unceremoniously, because I’d fallen into a haze that only allowed me to focus on him, on his body, on his face. I was surprised that he stopped me before he took to the mattress and ran his huge hands down either side of my body until he was sitting on the bed and his hands were on my hips. “Can I take these off?” he asked, tugging at the hem of my pants. I nodded, and watched him as he undid the button and tugged them down over the curve of my ass and onto the floor. I stepped out of them, and felt his hands wandering up onto the skin of my belly under the button-down shirt. 

“Are you nervous?” I asked, curious as to why he was touching me so much before I could touch him. 

“No,” he sighed. “I just can’t get enough of you.” _ Oh, well, okay, fuck. _ His hands gently pulled the buttons open, starting from the bottom. When the entire shirt was open, he gripped my hip with one hand and ran the other up from my belly to the soft skin over my sternum. He rubbed one nipple and then the other, sending sparks all over me. But that action drove me back into my desire to elicit responses from him, to learn his body right along with him. I reached down and pushed at his shoulder gently.

“Lie back,” I cooed into his ear, pressing my lips against it so I could feel him shudder. Obediently, he lowered his torso back onto the mattress, his blonde hair splayed around his face which was full of rosy anticipation. I realized that once again, he wasn’t wearing his glasses. _ Good, that just means I can’t knock them into his face on accident. _

I leaned over him, my hip resting on the edge of the bed and supporting myself with one arm. The other was busy, as I ran my hand up and down his body from knee to chest over that soft, red fabric. I strayed near his groin but never quite touched it, massaging the muscles of his lower belly and his quads gently. Fuck, his quads were amazing. He sighed over and over, watching my hand. Finally I slid it up over his swollen cock, which had been twitching temptingly beneath the fabric as it laid back against his stomach, and he gasped. 

“Will you stop me if you don’t like something?” I asked him softly.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Good.” I rubbed a slow circle around on the underside of the head, watching his body tense in response. “You’re so pretty in your dress,” I said breathily, looking up at his eyes. They were burning with arousal. “I almost don’t wanna take it off you. I don’t think I will.” 

“Maker,” he whimpered. “But will you touch my skin? Please?”

“Of course, sweet thing,” I cooed, leaning down to run my nose up his cheek. I gathered the dress fabric in my hand over his belly button, and made sure when I tugged it upwards that it brushed against his cock as it went. He panted heavily, shivering as I uncovered him. “How could I resist?” I ran my fingers lightly up the underside of him, relishing every noise he made.

Then I moved, vacating the bed in favor of taking to my knees between his legs. I bent down over him, looking up through my eyebrows as I pressed my lips against the head of his cock. He watched me, wide-eyed, mouth slack. I swiped a pearl of precum off him with my tongue, then laved his length from base to tip. As I took him into my mouth, he groaned loudly.

“_Fuck_, Aeon,” he swore, and I felt myself flush with lust. Sometimes, there’s nothing hotter than making someone else make noises like that, yanno? I started slowly, recording Matt’s every response. He was flushed across his entire neck and chest, his plush mouth swollen and pouting. When I took his entire length into my throat the first time, he threw his head back and sucked in a breath like he was dying. “Oh, Maker!”

I drew myself up off him slowly, letting a string of spit trail between my mouth and his cock. I took his sack in my hand, massaging it ever so gingerly, and he shuddered. 

“Do you like that?” I asked.

“_Yes,_” he gasped. I smirked and kept up my ministrations, suckling at the spot under the head of his length that made him respond so well. His chest heaved up and down as he panted. “Will you, um,” he began, but stopped to make a delicious whimpering sound. 

“Will I what?”

“Will you touch me-- lower?” He seemed uncertain of how to say it, but I was pretty sure I knew what he meant. I slipped my hand down over the puckered opening of his ass. 

“Here?”

“Yes,” he whimpered. “I uh, I-- found out about that, recently.”

“Oh, did you?” I asked coyly, smirking, delighted. _ You’re about to find out some more about it. _ I plunged two fingers into my mouth, swirling spit all over them before I lowered them to circle his opening. He whimpered again. I leaned up to take his cock into my mouth once more, and gently eased him open while I did so. He was shaking underneath me, the fabric of the dress bunched around his waist as he balled the bedclothes up in his fists.

“Ah, _ fuck_! Fuck, Aeon!” he swore, mewling as I worked a single digit very, very slowly and gently into him. I lavished his cock with attention to keep him from getting too nervous, but he seemed nothing short of exhilarated. “It feels so good!” 

“You really like that, don’t you?” I cooed, beginning to work my finger in and out, dribbling more spit onto it as I went just to make sure it was extra comfortable. 

“I-- I, _ fuck-- _”

“You dirty thing.” I was absolutely ecstatic, of course. Watching his huge, beautiful body just go to jello as I gently, lovingly fucked him was truly the stuff of dreams. I dearly hoped this was only the beginning, and eventually I could, like, find out if they sold strap-ons at the commissary or something. I stroked his cock, finally gripping it firmly in my hand. He let out a string of moans and little gasping sobs. “Would you like more, or is this enough?”

“One-- one more-- fuck-- _ please_,” he begged. My eyebrows shot up.

“You really are a dirty thing! Have you been watching porn on the cortex?” I teased, even as I worked a second finger inside him with the same patience as I had the first. He whined and moaned incoherently, his hips starting to rut, his legs spreading further apart. I curled my fingers and found it; that oh-so-underrated piece of anatomy, the prostate.

“Fuuuck,” he bawled. “Right there!”

“I said _ have you been watching porn on the cortex,_ Mattau?” I was falling quickly into bossy top territory, hungry for more and more signs of his submission. I slowed my hands to make a point.

“Yes!” he cried. “I have!”

“Good,” I crooned, picking up the pace once more. “I’m glad you’re learning what you like, so I can learn how to make you melt like this. I want to watch you come apart, you dirty, lovely thing.” He stared up at me now, mouth totally agape, his black eyes full of shock and arousal as my talk got progressively dirtier. 

“Oh, Maker, Aeon, you’re-- _ fuck-- _ you’re gonna-- gonna make me--”

“Cum for me, beautiful creature,” I commanded him sweetly, keeping my hands moving. As soon as he heard it, his hips started to stutter and then his body went rigid. Cum shot up over his stomach, onto the fabric of the dress, and he gasped for breath. I milked his orgasm for all it was worth, slowing gently to a stop. He was limp as I crawled up beside him, tugging his face towards me. I watched his eyelids flutter, his blown-out pupils seeking me. 

“Holy shit,” he panted. I smiled.

“Hey,” I replied, stroking his hair. He pawed for me with his hand, tugging me up to lay on top of him so he could slide his hands under the unbuttoned shirt and lay them against my skin. He was warm all over, and I planted little kisses over his neck and collarbone, up under his chin, in front of his ears. He said nothing, only drew in and let out breath after breath as his body descended from the heights. His fingers pushed into the flesh of my lower back gently, rubbing it. I watched him ardently, quietly, still petting his blonde head.

Wordlessly, he tugged me up even closer. His eyes were heavy-lidded and bleary still, and his lips sought mine hungrily. Before I knew it, his tongue was snaking in and out of my mouth, his hands kneading the flesh of my ass and pushing closer and closer in. I was, of course, ridiculously slick with desire already, but I wasn’t expecting him to trail his fingers through it, or swirl them around my entrance. I groaned involuntarily into his mouth. 

“Let me taste you again,” he pleaded, in this sweet and almost sleepy way that was full of desperate hunger. “Please.” _ Holy fucking shit, I mean, who the fuck am I to object? _

I lifted myself up, and he pulled me with a sudden show of strength up onto his face. He nuzzled into the soft flesh to either side of my cunt before he took my clit into his mouth, and I moaned loudly. I hadn’t even realized just how crazy turned on I was, I’d been so focused on him. But when his tongue ran flat and languorous over me, I became acutely aware of just how easy it was about to be for him to get me off.

“Ohmigod, Matt, oh my _ God_,” I mumbled, whimpering. “Oh, I love your mouth. Fuck--”

“Mmmm,” he groaned, and the reverberations of his voice gave me a shudder. I looked down at his face between my legs, but his eyes were closed as he explored and indulged in me. He swirled his tongue around my entrance and I gasped. By the time he slid two fingers inside me my thighs were shaking.

“AH!” I yelped, my hands tangling in his hair instinctively as his hand pumped steady and deep against my g-spot. “Fuck! Matt!” Finally his eyes opened and stared up at me beneath leaden lids, watching me intently while I babbled and my whole body jerked. “Fuck-- shit-- oh, _ God_, oh-- fuck, I love-- I _ love _ it-- p-please don’t stop--”

Every part of my body suddenly crackled to life, and my orgasm lashed through me from my core all the way to my fingers and toes. My whole lower body clenched, and I shook violently over him as I tried to stay upright on my knees. He didn’t stop, either. He just kept going, and waves of pleasure crashed over me. Just when I thought I was done, he pressed his fingers very firmly into me and I felt myself cum into his mouth. The wet sound of his ministrations got even wetter, and he growled into my flesh. But I was shaking too hard to hold myself up anymore, and I toppled over beside him. I don’t know how we got untangled and rearranged on the bed like we did, I was so hazy with pleasure. All I know is, I found myself curled up with him as we both caught our breath, my eyes closed. I felt his lips press into my forehead. 

“Aeon,” he sighed, pulling me closer.

“Hm?”

“I just… I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you’re real.” I smiled, blushing. 

“Know the feeling,” I murmured.

“Everything you just did to my body was perfect. Everything you said was perfect.”

“Not to be rude, but I’m your only basis for comparison.” I chuckled faintly.

“I don’t mean in comparison. I mean it was perfect to me. It made me _ feel _ perfect,” he explained. My eyes fluttered open then, looking up into his. He petted my head tenderly. 

“Oh,” was all I could think to say. He smiled. 

“I keep thinking I should ask you how your day went,” he said, giggling. I giggled back.

“It went well. Saber training with droids today.”

“Oh yeah? Very exciting.”

“I’m gettin’ good, too.”

“I bet you are,” he cooed, kissing my forehead again. “Fierce little one.”

“Mmmmm,” I hummed. “Sparring with Kylo tomorrow.”

“You nervous?”

“No.” He grinned with his lips still against my face.

“I’m so proud of you,” he murmured. I felt a strange pang in my heart, when he said it.

“Really?” He’d said it before, but for some reason everything felt so much more vivid, so much more intense and frightening than it had the last time. I felt like I’d fucked up significantly more since then. He leaned his head back and lifted my face by the chin.

“Yes. You were scared when you got here. And you should’ve been. You were alone, you didn’t have your medicine, you couldn’t remember anything, and the Supreme Leader of the First Order had taken a special interest in you. You’ve had so much to deal with. You’ve had nonstop lessons with Kylo, and you’ve also been tortured in other ways--” here I giggled-- “and you’ve been seeing scary things and recently got noticed by the scariest man in the galaxy. _And_ you’ve also built your saber, gotten so much more powerful, and saved me and Kylo and Ben’s life. And you’ve done karaoke on top of it all!” Now was I giggling uncontrollably, but I also felt the strangest thing. Tears were welling up in my eyes while I laughed, and they started to escape down my nose and cheek. “Just because it’s been a bumpy ride doesn’t mean you haven’t grown. You’re taking your own story back. Even though you’re still losing memories, you’re fighting to be who you are. And you’re so strong. Aeon,” he paused, and lifted my face up in both his hands where I was simultaneously laughing and weeping, “Seriously. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve shown me. What you’ve given me. What you’ve done for Kylo and Ben. You’re the only person-- the _ only _ person-- who’s ever seen us, really seen us. As what we are, and who we are. You’re the only person who’s ever respected us like you have. You can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“Maybe I can,” I sniffled. Strangely, despite the fact that there were people in my life before who had tried really, really hard to get it, I’d felt more accepted and understood and even _ respected _ for having a bipolar brain on this ship than I ever had anywhere else. Maybe because they had no notion of a pathology of it. Even Lucky, the fucking medical droid who didn’t believe in the Force, hadn’t made any fuss at all over my choice to hang in there with my symptoms and figure out what the hell they meant in this world, now that I was here. And after Kylo corrected Hux on my pronouns… 

I felt Matt’s lips descend to kiss the tears off my face gently. My lower lip trembled. 

“I love you so much, you know,” he sighed. “I don’t know how you got here. But I’m so glad you did.” 

“I love you back,” I told him. I wanted to tell him that I loved all three of them, that I always had. Luke had totally hit the nail on the head. But I was so overcome, I just held him tighter. “Thank you.” 

We laid there for a while as my tears faded. As soon as I caught myself nodding off, though, I stirred.

“Gotta take this off,” I murmured, pulling my button down off very clumsily.

“We oughta shower,” Matt murmured back, wriggling out of his dress.

“In the morning.” I wasn’t concerned. He chucked the offending garments away, and pulled the covers up around us. We were too spent to even say goodnight before we both slipped away, folded in one another’s arms. 

I dreamed about flying a spaceship around the galaxy with Matt and Kylo and Ben, who was finally growing up, going on madcap adventures. I dreamed about meeting his mother, and making friends with Rey and Finn and Poe (who were all in a loving polyamorous triad relationship, of course) and learning about the Force together. It was silly, idyllic, and wonderful. That’s how I knew it was a dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just love wholesome smut with Matt, i won't lie. watching him get to explore things and be himself heals my lil heart. 
> 
> thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts about this fic. i love that you love it, or have things you're interested in or distracted by, or things that you think about. this fic honestly gets into some major feels pretty soon (like it doesn't already...?) and i genuinely value conversations about those things for sure, if you feel comfy sharing. take care y'all! <3 <3


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I have no idea how the Force works.

I woke up alone the next morning, which I’d kind of expected, and showered and changed into the clothes I’d brought with me. I was hazy, a little euphoric. Matt just had me sooo fucked up. I wasn’t used to being treated with so much adoration, from someone I adored back so fully. I kept sighing while I was getting ready. 

We’d fallen into a routine of mostly going to the meditation room first, then to the training hall. It worked pretty well, since my energy levels were a lot better in general after lunch. Today was no different, and I when I entered the meditation room Kylo was already there. He stood with his back to me, looking out at the ice planet that the ship was still in orbit around. I walked up behind him, still feeling the afterglow of my night with Matt. The planet was still beautiful, and so easy to get lost in watching as clouds whirled over it, only barely perceptible above the white snow that covered its surface.

“Good morning,” Kylo said, voice low and calm.

“Hey,” I replied. 

“I’ve been thinking, this morning, about your troubles with Palpatine.”

“Oh yeah?” 

“There is a technique for keeping intruders out that you may benefit from.” _ Oh good, _I thought.

“I am extremely fuckin’ down to work on that,” I informed him, turning to look up at his face. I’d instinctively stood very close to him, I realized. 

“You may not find the process of learning it very pleasant.” He looked down at me, and I could tell he was genuinely concerned about whatever this was. I raised an eyebrow.

“What exactly is the process?” 

“It may result in my seeing some of your memories. It’s also simply difficult to learn, and the process can be tiring. But I wanted you to at least try it, today.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t really concerned with Kylo seeing my memories anymore. My thoughts were a different story, of course.

“Are you certain?” he asked, brow knitting. I was surprised at his hesitancy. I guess it had to be from how angry I’d been before at the idea of him seeing into my mind in any way?

“Yes.” I nodded. “I wanna learn, learning sucks sometimes. I get it.” He turned towards me.

“Very well. I think we will begin with a less aggressive approach. Instead of trying to barge into your mind, we can simply connect, first.” He held his hands out palms-up towards me, and I looked down to see that they were bare, no gloves. I turned to face him, and I knew without being told that I was supposed to put my hands on top of his. I placed them there gently, marveling at how big they were compared to mine. 

As soon as our flesh was touching, I felt it. The energy between us that flowed in its endless loop, that I was starting to feel at all sorts of times. I looked up at him, met his eyes. They were steady, focused but not as full of feral energy as usual. It was almost like he was nervous about what we were trying to do.

“I feel you,” I said quietly.

“And I you.” For a moment, time froze. I remembered his lips against mine, his majestic nose nuzzling into my neck. Butterflies turned loose in my stomach.

“Now what?” I asked, a little breathless.

“Close your eyes.” That did nothing to help the butterflies, but I did it anyway. “Now that we are connected, I want you to focus on the present. Everything you feel right now, from the chill of the window to my hands on yours.” 

“Okay.” I could feel every scar on his palms, all the minute little reminders of how harsh his life had been. I felt the chill on the right side of my body where the planet hung behind glass. I felt my feet on the floor, the butterflies in my guts, my heart beating in my chest. 

“I’m going to push, just a little, into your memories. When you feel it, focus on what you’re experiencing right now, and use it to hold your ground.” _ Oh, so it’s like meditation almost? _ I wondered at that. “Are you ready?” 

“Yes.” I was so impressed, lowkey, that Kylo was working so hard on being… respectful to me. Once again it was like he’d done some reading, or something. It made me notice something else, something bright in the middle of my solar plexus. 

Then, I felt it. The sense that someone was slowly tugging the drawer of my memory-chest open to look inside it. For a split second I wanted to jerk away, slam the drawer like I had once before. But I caught myself, and focused instead on the chill that was only on one half of my body. It tingled, especially where my skin felt it right next to the warmth of his hands. I felt that sense of intrusion ease off, like I’d pushed it away firmly. 

“Perfect,” he said softly. “Now I’m going to try harder.”

“Okay.” As promised, the feeling came back. This time it was like someone had yanked the drawer wide open, and my whole body tensed up. I pushed myself down into the floor, felt it against the bottoms of my feet, felt the cold tingling against me. But this didn’t help, and I felt a rustling like he was sifting through my memories inside the drawer. I took in a sharp breath, noticed how it entered my lungs and spread through my body before I let it out, and I pressed my palms just a little harder into his. Once again, his presence was pushed firmly away. 

“You’re getting it. How does it feel?”

“It feels… steady.” There was something very grounding about it. It was the opposite of Kylo’s signature Big Angry Boy brand of push coming to shove. The brand which had made the most sense to me at first, too.

“I’m going to try once more.” Instead of replying, I just nodded. I wanted to stay focused on my task. I was feeling confident, excited about learning something new. 

When the next intrusion came, though, it felt like a spike driving into my skull. The drawer was yanked out, the memories strewn everywhere. I gasped, surprised. I tried really hard to feel the cold on one side, the warm on the other. But I could sense him pushing the memories around like he was going to go through them, although it felt haphazard. He wasn’t hunting anything specific. But it still felt frightening and chaotic. I dug my fingers into his palms, trying to breathe, to feel the ship spinning. I grasped desperately for any sensation that I could connect to more than the fear. But he was everywhere, his presence moving between the broken points in time that I had left in my mind, and--

I saw my mother’s face the first time I was hospitalized, when they finally let her come visit me. She was holding my hands, looking at the bandages on my wrists, crying. I felt a wave of enormous guilt crash into me--

On the playground, I was probably ten years old, there was a boy who used to pick fights with me when I didn’t respond to his attempts to insult me. I was throwing my fist into his face, felt the crunch of cartilage when I hit his nose, I was angry and crying--

My abuser’s hand was on my wrist, over the extremely faint scars there, gripping it so hard that it sent knives up my arm; he was saying _ you are such a fuckup, it’s no wonder nobody else will put up with you-- _

I was staring up at the ceiling of my room on the Supremacy, my body felt like it weighed a ton, my heart felt like it would never stop hurting, I was so afraid and so alone; and as Kylo’s words about keeping me here on the ship rang in my ears for the hundredth time, everything inside me broke and I started to sob uncontrollably--

Screaming, howling, my voice ragged and breaking while I strained against handcuffs and a crushing hold that was pinning me to the ground, my skin covered in bugs that only I could see, screaming _ he’s trying to kill me he wants me to die so he can have my soul-- _

A beautiful beach, the sun just barely rising; the tide still low; the breeze on my sunburnt skin. There on the shore, down about a hundred yards away, was a figure. A huge, tall figure covered in scraps of white fabric that gave way to a huge pair of wings folded on its back. As it turned, revealing a face that was so beautiful I could only remember how I felt when I saw it as opposed to the details, the figure extended arms towards me. Two other sets of wings unfolded gently behind it, and from its palms flowed every secret in the universe. All the sacred knowledge I would need to heal everyone, to sew up the wounds in the world. Everything could be okay now, and so I could be okay. Out of the corner of my eye, a beach ball sailed through the air over the grassy dunes. I turned to look at it, then back around. But the angel, or whatever it was, was gone, and my heart was breaking--

I was drunk at a party, and there was shouting and cheering but I was staring at the figure of a thousand-eyed demon standing on the other side of the beer pong table, heart pounding and all I could think was to run, run, RUN--

“NO!” I shouted, and this time I felt like I’d driven the intrusion out with the mental equivalent of a giant sledgehammer. My eyes opened wide, frightened, tears on my cheeks as my hands gripped something hard. I sagged, head bent down towards the floor, and a choking sob came out of my mouth before I felt myself clamp down over my urge to cry, struggling for breath.

Then his arms came around me, holding me close to his enormous chest while his hands stroked my back and cradled my head. His nose pressed into my hair-fuzz, and his breaths were big and even. 

“I’m sorry,” Kylo murmured, and there was no mistaking his sincerity. “It got away from me. I kept trying to pull out, I’m sorry. That was too much.”

I just wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his black clothing, trying to match his breathing. The Force was still flowing between us, and I’m pretty sure that was why I felt no anger. Just his remorse, tender and immense. I knew if I could feel his remorse, he probably felt my pain, too. We stood there for a moment while I tried to calm down.

“It’s okay,” I whispered finally. He ran his cheek over my head, pulled me in a little tighter. I felt his relief like a flood. 

“I’m sorry, Aeon. I don’t know what happened. I’ve never felt that before, like I was being pulled through everything in your mind so fast I couldn’t stop it.”

“It’s okay, really.” I leaned my head towards his face where it pressed into me. “I know you didn’t mean to.” 

“I’m…” But it was like his words got lost in something else, some emotion clotted up in his throat. It felt overwhelming, like shock and pain and sadness. Then I felt something wet on my head, and I pulled back away from his face.

There were tears there. On Kylo Ren’s face. _ Holy shit. _

“Kylo!” I exclaimed softly, reaching up to swipe the tears from his cheeks as he and Matt had so often done for me. “It’s alright, I promise!” 

“It’s the memories,” he murmured, looking down and away from me in what looked like a very familiar brand of shame. Someone else didn’t like to be seen crying, either. “They-- Aeon, they _ hurt_.” Now his eyes, black and watery, found me again.

“I know,” I sighed. I ran the back of my fingers over his cheek softly. I was very aware that they hurt, of course. The only reason I wasn’t breaking down over some of them was because he was here, and we were connected, I was pretty sure. So I had something else to ground me a little.

“I never knew.” He looked at the floor. “I never knew why you were in your room for three days after… I’m so sorry, Aeon. I never knew that kind of thing happened to you, never knew what it felt like. But I didn’t want to let you think you were free when I wasn’t sure I could let you be free. I was trying to be honest with you.” _ Oh. That. _ I blinked for a moment, and then a huge sense of relief and validation washed over me. Him trying to be honest with me even if it hurt was actually, believe it or not, a huge leap for him in the right direction, I think.

“I never told you.” My hand lingered on his face, thumb stroking his skin. He looked back at me, surprised. “Thanks for worrying about me, though.”

“I should’ve come down there myself,” he murmured. 

“It all worked out okay. Matt took care of me, and honestly, it helped me make my choice to stay.” I smiled faintly at him. “But I appreciate you apologizing anyway.”

He looked at me with something much deeper than respect. It was some kind of understanding, a level of _ empathy _ I’d never seen on his face before. _ He’s so lost, and he’s so alone. _ Slowly his tears were stopping, and I felt his hand on the back of my neck stroke the fuzz there gently. 

“I see why you wanted my respect so badly when you came here. I’m sorry it took me so long to offer it.”

“It’s really okay. I understand.” He gave a little smile when I said that.

“You always understand me, little one.” It was the gentlest use of that nickname I’d ever heard, and I felt my heart turn to liquid. _ Oh, wow. _I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his as the Force energy that moved so freely between us seemed to be everywhere at once. 

“Your memories hurt too, huh?” I asked, deflecting how enraptured I felt with a little dry humor that was also completely sincere. His face fell a little sad.

“I wish you didn’t know.”

“You can’t protect me from everything that hurts, Kylo,” I told him softly. “No matter how hard you try. But that’s okay. It still means a lot to me that you’d try.” For a moment, his jaw worked like he was trying to make himself speak.

“You’re the only person who’s ever tried to protect _ me_, you know,” he said quietly. That hit me right where I live, y’all. Like, my entire heart broke for him a little bit. I thought about what a profound change had come over him in the time I’d known him. _ All that because someone finally understood that Kylo wasn’t just a big, scary mask for Ben? That he was his own person, and under his anger was the same fear everyone else felt? _

“Sometimes even the people we think are the strongest and the meanest and the scariest still need it, right?” My smile was wry, but I’m pretty sure he saw right through my flimsy attempts not to make it painfully obvious how much I cared about him. His return smile wasn’t wry at all. His eyes lingered on my mouth, and my heartbeat picked up. It picked up even more when he bent his head down slowly towards mine.

Then he stopped, suddenly, and looked back into my eyes. Through the strange totality of the Force, I knew he was making sure it was okay. My breathing was getting faster, mouth falling slack as I felt an exhilarating wave of just how much he wanted me. About as much as I wanted him, let’s put it that way. As soon as I knew his question, he knew my answer.

In one quick movement, his lips landed on mine. Their hunger was slow, full of longing, so much less aggressive than they had been before. Never as gentle as Matt, but it would be weird if he was, honestly. His lips were soft, drawing mine in; his tongue darted along them, met mine. I tangled my fingers in his beautiful hair, felt his strong arm pushing into my back to draw me closer. Kissing like that while we were so connected had me struck, in awe of the sheer depth of it.

When my teeth tugged his bottom lip, something changed. I felt that familiar desire flare up instantly in both of us, and the hand on my face took hold of my jaw a little more firmly and he angled his head to press our open mouths together. With each swirl of his tongue I felt myself tighten like a spring, fire running through me right between my thighs. Both of us began to breathe harder, to push against one another in turns. _ Fuck, fuck, FUCK. It’s just like it was before in the training hall. Wait a minute, don’t we have another lesson toda-- _

“Spar with me,” he growled into my mouth. The best thing about Kylo is how much he wants to fightfuck me as much as I do him, probably. Well, one of the best things. I smirked.

“I thought you’d never ask.” The light in his eyes became feral, and he whirled to leave the meditation room, pulling me with him. I was so pumped, I was finally gonna cross blades with Kylo Ren. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd say i'm sorry to be such a tease
> 
> BUT I'M NOT >:)
> 
> uwu <3


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo earns the rank of master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is... wait for it... smut in this chapter :o

The training hall emptied fast upon our arrival, but not before he was standing at one end of it with his lightsaber drawn and turning to face me. I could feel the sudden terror from the troopers as they scuttled away from us, some of them just dropping their equipment unceremoniously. I drew my weapon, felt the Force everywhere but especially between us. For just a moment, we stood staring each other down.

And then, without warning or signal, I charged him. Fuck it, right? 

It was always like a dance in the beginning. The training I’d had already moved my body for me, as I learned how Kylo moved, how he thought. He was heavy, powerful, with very little wasted movement. At first he only defended, reacted. 

“Don’t go easy on me, Ren,” I challenged him. 

“This is just a warmup, little one,” he replied, smirk absolutely predatory. I attacked him twice more, fully expecting him to deflect them when and how he did.

“Good.” I feinted, came at him sideways. He reacted fast, and then came down on me with a strike that I dodged. The dance picked up speed, spinning and turning as we circled each other. There was no anger, no furious escalation like there had been before. I was sure that would change the game, if it came up, but right then all I wanted was to surprise him. To match him. I didn’t know if I could, but I knew it was my goal.

We were tit for tat for a while, and I switched hands just to see if I could get the advantage. He looked delighted by this, and slowly I could tell he really wasn’t going easy on me anymore. The room crackled with energy. _ Come on, fucker, don’t you dare hold back. _ I snarled and leapt towards him again, and he met me with the same fervor.

The hum of our weapons was furious as we lunged at each other, blocking and dodging and twisting and swinging. I lost track of conscious thought, running on pure Force-guided instinct, faster and faster until I’m pretty sure it looked from the outside like we were actually trying to kill each other. Finally our sabers met as we pushed towards each other, deadlocked, eyes boring into one another over the light of the blades.

“Are you tired, apprentice?” he goaded me.

“Never.” Suddenly the blast shields came down around the entire hall, steel covering all the windows and doors. He roared and jumped back, then brought a volley of blows down onto me that I knocked back one after the other. I spun his blade with one, and trapped it down by his side. The furious red tip of it was burning a hole in the mat. We were close enough that my shoulder was on his chest, each of us gripping our saber hilt with both hands and pushing against each other. His strength was terrific, and honestly I have no idea where mine came from. Sheer adrenaline and the Force, maybe. We locked eyes a second time, grimacing and panting.

“You’re incredible,” he breathed, and his praise went straight to my low belly.

“You’re amazing,” I shot back, and some part of my brain wondered when this had turned into a circle jerk (and yet, why it wasn’t literally that, either). With a grunt he pushed back against me, and I slid my saber out away from him and switched hands again to issue a strike he only barely deflected. We spun, blades screaming, and he nearly swiped me one across the face but I managed to duck and drive towards his knees. If his strikes were powerful and his movement quick and sudden, mine were lithe and targeted as I let the inherent axis of the saber direct the flow. I was sweating, breaths still hard and heavy, but I was almost energized rather than exhausted.

Finally he managed to bring down a blow that trapped me in a block, pushing back against him with my weapon overhead as he bore down onto me with all his might. And he was fucking mighty, lemme tell ya. I held him up there with more rigid, stoic strength than I thought I had in me, staring into his eyes. 

“My apprentice,” he said, not letting up at all. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“I would never,” I retorted, grinning. This was the first time I’d felt that much power that wasn’t also totally unhinged by rage. 

“It’s no wonder you were so loathe to submit to me.”

“I learned from the best.” His eyes flashed.

“I want you,” he growled. _ Fuck, it’s about time. _

“Come get me,” I suggested. In a blink, his saber was off and the hilt clattered to the floor. Mine followed suit, and he was on me. His hands dug into my hips as our mouths battled to dominate one another, my hands gripping either side of his face. I realized dully that I was bumping back into the wall close to one of the benches even though I didn’t remember getting there. I just remembered his hot mouth descending over my neck, sucking at my pulse, biting my collarbone. I swore and tugged his hair, which made him growl into my skin. 

“Is this what you want, little one?” he asked as one of his hands came between my legs and stroked me through the fabric. I shuddered and moaned. 

“Goddammit, Kylo.” The Voice of Reason was silent. There was only my own voice in my head. _ What if all the progress you’ve made goes away? What if he thinks he’s REALLY in control? _

“What do you need?” he asked, pulling back enough to look into my eyes. It was a real question, I realized. He wanted to know what I needed to know to decide. I looked back at him, thoughts whirling in my head.

“Will it change anything, if we do this?” I asked quietly. He tilted his head just a little, seeming curious.

“I would still respect you, if that’s what you mean.”

Well, that had to be at least mostly what I meant, right? Getting clear on these things when my mind was so addled by lust, confused by anger, afraid of messing up, was so difficult. I had made so many mistakes because of sex, even because of love before. And still, my heart knew he wouldn’t-- he _ couldn’t _ change just because of me, even if I had inspired him to try. Hell I hadn’t even liked the idea of him changing because of Rey in some galactic manic pixie dream girl stunt. That was before I even got here.

_ I don’t want you to fix him. I want you to show him how to fix himself. _ Luke’s words rang in my memory. I had a bad habit of trying to fix people. I’d tried for a couple years, after everything in my old life fell to shit, to put that energy into fixing myself. I still wasn’t sure I’d succeeded. Losing what had been keeping me stable when I got here had felt like a huge setback, all my emotions addling my thoughts and my symptoms frightening me again once this became obviously not a joke I could laugh off. But, I’d decided to try and handle it myself that day in the lab when Lucky offered to help me stop seeing things. To try to see the truth in what I saw, even if it wasn’t ‘real.’ To respect myself, even while psychotic, which was when most people stopped respecting me even if they cared.

All this shit was swirling in my head while I looked back at Kylo’s face, which had turned into a mix of desire and something like… tenderness? Honesty looked tender on him, maybe. He seemed serious, hungry not just for my body anymore.

“And I’d still respect you,” I said finally. I could see the glimmer in his eyes, like what I’d said struck home with him much deeper than he’d expected.

“Enough to let me take you?” he murmured in that predatory coo that sent lightning through me every time. “Right here? Right now?” _ Jesus Christ. _ The fact that he wanted it to be my decision made it even hotter. Sure, he was wildly turned on-- but he was _ asking_. I took in a deep, slow breath as his fingers came up to trail down my neck, eyes holding mine.

“Yes,” I breathed, and his jaw worked as his gaze flitted down to my lips.

“Good,” he growled, and his mouth descended onto mine with furious intensity. _ Oh fuck, _ I thought as his hands cupped each of my ass cheeks and lifted me up to wrap my legs around his waist. He pushed me back against the wall, pinning me there with his incredible strength. His lips moved down my neck, sucking and nipping and drawing a series of gasps out of me with absurd ease. If Matt’s gentle and focused curiosity was intoxicating, Kylo’s ravenous intensity was overwhelmingly thrilling. He found some spot or another above my collarbone that struck up a whole network of nerves, and he skirted the edge of bruising me with his fervor. His hips ground into mine, and I felt my trousers clinging to the dampness there.

Without ceremony, he yanked my pants down by their waistband and didn’t even bother to pull them past my mid-thigh before he pushed my legs up, folding them onto either side of me. I felt a strange pressure around my wrists, and they slammed upwards against the wall above my head and were held there. _ Oh shit. He really does use the Force like that. _ It sent a whole new wave of excitement through me. 

“Fuck,” I hissed as he palmed my cunt a little before taking a knee. He held me up by the backs of my thighs as he ran his nose around the delicate flesh just to either side of it. “You fucking tease.” His black eyes, pupils blown out wildly, stared up at me through his eyebrows as he hovered so close to the center of my desire.

“Be grateful, little one. I’m giving you exactly what you want. No more...” He ran his tongue from my center to my clit without warning. “And no less.” I yelped as his fingers dug into the flesh of my thighs and his lips wrapped around the bud that ached so much for him. He was an expert with his mouth, drawing a string of shuddering moans and hushed expletives out of me as he suckled and lapped at it. He let my legs loose to settle around his enormous shoulders as he ran a finger around my entrance slowly, maddeningly.

“_Fuck_, Kylo,” I whimpered pathetically. 

“You’re so wet for me,” he murmured against my cunt.

“You motherfucker,” I hissed back, wriggling my hips.

“You waited this long,” he said. “You can wait a little longer.” And suddenly he was standing, pulling me off the wall and releasing the grip of the Force around my arms as he spun and sat me down on the bench. I stared at the slick on his chin. It was exactly one thing I’d wanted, that was for fuckin’ sure. He bent down to kiss me, to press the taste of me into my own mouth while his hands undid the clasp of his belt and opened the front of his trousers. Immediately I reached up to grasp his cock, but Kylo gripped my wrist and held it firmly away, and grabbed my other one for good measure. He brought them together and held them off to the side with one hand, and looked down at me while he stroked himself with the other.

“Open that filthy, gorgeous mouth,” he crooned, and obviously I didn’t yet, just raised an eyebrow at him instead. He growled and took my jaw in his hand, pushing two fingers between my lips and rubbing along my tongue with them. “Did I stutter?”

I opened then, almost too excited to keep being a brat. I swirled my tongue around his fingers just to make a point. He smirked, and I saw his cheeks flush with arousal.

“Good little thing,” he said, and pushed the head of his cock into my mouth. I ran my tongue against the underside of it where I knew he was sensitive, and he hissed between clenched teeth. He let me do that for just a moment before he pushed it farther in, and I opened my jaw as wide as I could to accept his girth. His hand clamped over the top of my head and he guided me as I bobbed up and down on it, sucking mightily. He groaned and pushed a little deeper with every thrust until I gagged, feeling it strike the back of my throat. _ Fuck, holy shit. _ He held me there for a moment as he inhaled sharply, then pulled out of me and released my hands to pull me up by the shoulders to standing. 

“Bend over,” he ordered furiously as he spun me around. This time I didn’t have it in me to resist, my cunt throbbing with want. I put my hands on the bench, gripping it in anticipation. His hard length rubbed against me as he ground his hips slowly. “Tell me what you want.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I replied, smirking. His fingers grabbed my ass and dug nails into it harshly.

“I wanna hear you say it.”

“Say what?” Now he bent over me, holding the head of his cock against my opening as he purred into my ear.

“Don’t make me ask you again. What do you want me to do to you, you filthy little thing?” His dirty talk melted my resolve, I’m ashamed to say.

“Fuck me out of my mind, sir,” I said, adding the ‘sir’ just to appease him. He stood up and finally pushed his cock into me with barely contained urgency, and for a split second it almost hurt. But then, it felt fucking _ amazing _ . “Oh my _ God_,” I groaned, unable to hide my intense pleasure. He drew it back out, slowly, and then thrust it back in again, and I made some incredibly embarrassing sound. “Shit!”

“Fuck, you feel _ so _ good. Is this it? What you wanted for so long?” he said, voice hoarse as he pounded into me once again.

“Yes!” I cried, totally no longer concerned with back-sassing him. “Fuck me, please!”

“Please, who?” His hips stopped, and I wanted to scream. 

“Please, sir! Please, Master Ren! Please, Supreme Leader!!” I was so fucked up I just threw as many flattering titles at him as I could think of, and it worked. With a snarl he started to ravage me at breakneck pace, driving into me with his need totally unfettered now. I howled, overwhelmed with how incredible it felt, the coil inside me starting to tighten.

“Fuck-- you-- you’re such a good-- little thing, letting me-- _ shit-- _ fuck you like I always wanted to,” he snarled. 

“Shit-- Kylo! Please, I’m _ so _ close!” I whimpered.

“Begging-- shit-- begging for me,” he continued, “Like a good-- _ aargh-- _ good little apprentice.” His hands dug into my flesh, his thrusts quickening even more as he shifted his angle just a little-- just fucking right. My eyes flew open as my orgasm approached.

“I’m--_ fuck, _I’m--”

“Cum for me, cum-- rrrgh!-- do it-- cum now!” he ordered, and my body absolutely obeyed. I clamped down on him, going stiff as my nerves exploded and my vision went blurry, before I let out a ragged cry. It wracked my body, pushing pleasure through me violently as waves of it hit one after the other. His pace stuttered and he made a gruff roar as his orgasm followed quick on mine. “Fuck!” he hissed, and I felt him spill into me as his thrusts finally slowed and stalled.

My legs started shaking violently, and I almost toppled to the floor, but his arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me upright and back against him, holding me there with one hand as he tugged my pants back up around my waist. Gently he pulled me with him as he stepped away and sat down on a floor mat, pulling me down between his legs and wrapping his arms around me. Burying his face in the back of my neck, I could feel his heavy breaths on my skin. We panted in unison as I leaned back against his massive form, totally limp.

“Oh, my God,” I mumbled. _ Holy shit. _ I liked it just as much as I liked sex with Matt, though the brands couldn’t have been more different. He held me against him like he was afraid I would leave, like he wanted me to fold into him-- to trust him. Or maybe that was me, projecting how much I wanted to trust him onto him. I wasn’t sure.

“Was it worth it, Aeon?” he asked me in a low, almost gentle voice. 

“Yes,” I replied, wrapping a hand around one of his.

“Good.” He pressed his lips into my neck. I admit, I was enthralled by his sudden tenderness. It surprised me, in the best way. 

“If you’re not careful, I might start liking you, yanno,” I told him, leaning my head back a little more snugly into his shoulder so I could say it quietly near his ear. I felt him smile into my skin.

“Can’t have that, can we?” he murmured. I smiled. _ Someone’s starting to get my sense of humor. _ One of his hands slid up around my neck, and my breath hitched. But he didn’t squeeze. Instead I felt his thumb brush softly against my delicate skin, sending sparkles all over my body. Then he leaned back up, turning his face towards mine and nudging mine towards his. He captured my mouth in a kiss that started so soft that my stomach filled with butterflies. It ended deep and sensual, and I felt like putty in his hands. A sensation that, under any other circumstances, would’ve made me nervous. But he’d leveled up so fast on showing respect to me that I felt safe there in his arms. 

“We should probably go,” I said as the kiss finally dwindled.

“I do have duties to attend to,” he agreed, and it seemed a little half-hearted.

“Don’t let me distract you.” I grinned.

“You always distract me,” he growled. “Luckily for me, you’re a great deal of the duties I must attend to.”

“I’d say you’ve attended to me very well.” He smirked despite himself.

“Anything for my apprentice.”

“I don’t think I know how to handle you being nice to me, Kylo.”

“Oh? You’d rather I wasn’t, little one?” he cooed, and the pressure from his thumb on my neck increased just a little. I shivered.

“Only at key moments. I’ll learn to handle it, the rest of the time,” I said, meeting his gaze pointedly. His eyes burned, a little smile still lurking at the corner of his mouth. 

“We’ll resume tomorrow, first thing,” he said. I nodded, and my eyes lingered on his lips. _ Damn. Now I’m kinda fucked up about Kylo, too. Well, I was fucked up about him before. This is a better kind of fucked up to be, I think. Probably. _ But he denied me another kiss by virtue of pulling away from me and standing up, readjusting his trousers. I followed suit and righted myself as much as I could. Luckily, we’d been training hard enough that looking somewhat disheveled wasn’t gonna raise any eyebrows. The emergency blast shields all started to slide up, and he made for the exit.

As he went, he turned back and gave me a look, the little smile still there on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *talks a bunch of shit about being a tease*
> 
> also me: OKAY I COULDN'T MAKE Y'ALL WAIT ANYMORE HERE TAKE THIS 
> 
> xD <3


	49. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank God for Mitaka.

You’d think, after getting that laid in the middle of the afternoon, that I woulda been all smiles. But you’d have forgotten that it was the last night before I was supposed to decide what the fuck to do with a certain ginger who was still in solitary confinement. Yeah, total buzzkill, right?

Luckily for me, Mitaka messaged me on the datapad to ask if I wanted to grab dinner and catch up. Boy, did I ever.

“Ducky, I got you a plate!” he called to me as I entered the officer’s mess. I smiled and made my way over to the little table where he was sitting.

“You’re a life saver,” I said, eyeing the line which was getting long.

“It’s a shipment day, so there’s decent food and everyone’s here to have a bite,” he explained. I looked at my plate, which was full of noodles and colorful things I could only assume were vegetables. Space vegetables.

“It looks nice.” It did look nice, in fact. I twirled my fork around in it. “So what’s new with you, Duffy?” 

“I met someone new,” he giggled, glancing around the mess hall as though it were a secret. “He’s this short little blonde fellow, a supply officer. He’s precious.”

“Oh really?” I beamed. “He’s got you very excited, hasn’t he?”

“I can scarcely help it,” he insisted. “I mean, you should have seen his collection, ducky. The finest casts of phallic excellence from all over the galaxy. He’s got one for every mood!” My jaw dropped.

“Wait, he has a collection of dicks?”

“It’s amazing. And he’s amazing. I mean I adored him instantly but those things really iced the cake,” he gushed. I blinked at him, still confused. Was having multiple dicks normal in space?

“Hang on. Why does he need so many?”

“I don’t think he _ needs _ any of them, ducky. He just doesn’t happen to biologically have one, and seems to enjoy a variety of options.” As it dawned on me what he meant, a huge smile crept over my face. _Mitaka is dating a trans guy! That’s so cute! There are trans people in space after all!_

“That’s fuckin’ awesome,” I said. “Congrats on finding someone new!”

“Thank you, thank you. I did finally dump the other one. He was getting on my nerves so badly, I just couldn’t anymore.”

“Good for you. Greener pastures and all that shit.”

“Or bluer pastures, or yellower pastures,” he tacked on, grinning. _Okay, that must be a space thing._ I smiled and took a bite of my noodles. They were delicious. I thought for a moment while I chewed and swallowed.

“Wait, so they _ do _ sell dildos at the commissary,” I realized aloud with a grin hanging at the corner of my mouth. Mitaka eyed me conspiratorially.

“Are we in the market, then?” he asked, and I just threw him a sly grin. He squeaked and clapped his hands very quietly. “Whom are we shopping for?”

“Uh, for me. I’d like to have a dick or two of my own.”

“I meant who is the lucky _ recipient _ of such a thing?” he clarified, winking.

“Oh.” I wondered for a moment if I shouldn’t say. But then again, he really didn’t know who Matt was at all. “That would be my technician.”

“Oh my!” His eyes got wide. “That…you said he’s very tall, right?”

“And _ very _ strong,” I replied, grinning. The little lieutenant sighed and wiped his hand over his brow in mock faintness.

“A big, strong bottom. Oh ducky, you’ll give me heart palpitations.”

“I know, right?” I was blushing just thinking about it. “He might be both, really. We’re still figuring it out. But it’s so exciting!”

“You are so sweet, going along with him on such a journey,” he sighed.

“I try.”

“Bless you.”

“Not all my sexual ventures are cursed, at least.” I giggled.

“Speaking of that, how’s the other thing?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. I flushed immediately. _Oh, Kylo was actually calling me filthy and fucking me within an inch of my life just a few hours ago actually. No big deal._

“Uh, it’s actually fine?” By the look on his face, Mitaka was equal parts impressed and skeptical.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, um. Really hasn’t been a problem at all, lately. I mean...”

“You’re a terrible liar, ducky.”

“I’m not lying!” I piped up. “It’s literally going fine. That’s the weird part. It’s going _ really _ fine. Like, respect levels are up. Assholery is at an all-time low. Also apparently I’m learning something, too. About the Force and also combat, I mean.” 

“Yes, I did hear something about how you two barged into the training hall early and were at one another’s throats earlier today. It’s rather why I decided to check in.” 

“We were sparring,” I murmured. 

“Is it always that charged, when you spar?” he asked me quizzically. I looked up from my next forkful of noodles very pointedly.

“Yes.” The little man giggled.

“Oooh, I see.” _Yeah, he totally knows we did it. Probably even can tell we did it today. After sparring. Oof._

"So. Yeah." I pushed the fork around on my plate, blushing as the image of Kylo's face between my legs, staring up at me, flashed through my brain. Mitaka eyed me.

"Was it... you know. Good?"

"God, yes," I said, shivering just a little. "It was fuckin' incredible."

"Oh, well that's good at least," he said, smirking a little. "I confess I'm rather fascinated to know the details, but I shan't press you."

"Good, 'cuz I'm not in the habit of sharing." I looked at him with a little smirk. He nodded, sighing.

"Ah well, my imagination runs wild I suppose. You... you did go through the First Order Protocol, right?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, brow furrowed.

"You know... the bit where you can't..." He gestured with his arm out in front of his belly, making a very round shape. I giggled.

"Oh, that! Yeah, no, Lucky was insistent. But I agreed with it, I'm obviously not tryna have kids right now. You think I'd be so irresponsible?" I teased him.

"Nono, of course not, just your intake into this place was far from procedure," he replied, waving me off. "I'm just, you know. A concerned party."

“You're too good to me, Duff. But yeah, there's nothing shitty going on. It’s totally fine. He was actually being real sweet to me recently when some Force stuff went wrong,” I said, a smile coming over my face despite me. “Only do not tell another living soul that he ever does anything sweet, ever, please. He will kill me.”

“I doubt anyone would believe me if I did, ducky,” he giggled. “But I won’t anyway. What went wrong?”

“Oh, just a certain Emperor who isn’t actually dead was tryna reach out,” I groaned. His face blanched just a little.

“You… you mean Palpatine?” 

“Yeah.”

“He-- well, you know about the transmission I presume?”

“I’ve heard, yeah.”

“I don’t know whose side he’s supposed to be on, but the idea that the only thing he’s really supposed to be is dead gives me the creeps, I confess,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“He’s always been on his own side,” I pointed out. “Which is why I’m not happy with Kylo’s plan.”

“Yes, there’s been a team at work on locating the Wayfinder, that the Supreme Leader is a very active member of.” 

“He’s made it abundantly clear that he plans to kill Palpatine, right?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Of course.” 

“Of course.” I sighed. “I thought tryna sort out what to do with Hux was bad. This is astronomically worse.” 

“Have you settled on what to do with him?” he asked.

“I’m supposed to decide tomorrow.” I looked at him, and his return look basically said _That’s not an answer, so the answer is no, but I won’t prod you about it._ “I’ll make my choice. Regardless of what it is, I won’t be executing him myself, that’s for fuckin’ sure.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did, ducky. He gave you that scar, among other things.”

“Duff, I… I won’t. I’d rather never kill another person ever again. Not if I can help it,” I told him earnestly, my guts crawling at the memory of Phasma’s corpse in the meditation room. Mitaka’s brow knit.

“You look pale. It’s really bothering you, huh?”

“Um.” I looked at my half-finished plate, then back at him. Was I about to tell Dopheld Mitaka about my hallucinations? He was such a good friend in every capacity. But I was terrified that he wouldn’t understand them and I would lose my only friend. It’s happened before.

“You can be honest with me, ducky,” he urged. I swallowed, trying to gulp down my fear. I was also so, so tired of hiding who and what I was in so many ways.

“I have… a condition,” I began haltingly. “It makes me hallucinate. I see and hear and even feel things that aren’t there sometimes.” He was listening with a concerned expression and nodding. “It’s not the Force, except sometimes I think it might be? They’re related, somehow. I’m still figuring that out. But they also appear because of what’s going on inside my head.”

“And you’re upset about Phasma?” he asked.

“Well, I guess so. I’ve been trying not to think about it. But I swear that’s when they get worse, always. I… I’ve seen her body. Her corpse. It always… it stares at me, and sometimes it’s in two pieces.” I felt my hands shaking, and I put my fork down. Looking back at him, I awaited judgement. The little man’s very sweet face was wrinkled with worry, with sympathy, with fright-- not frightened of me, though. Frightened _for_ me.

“That’s terrifying, ducky.” He folded his napkin into his lap rather seriously and leaned towards me. “Are you… I mean, you’re handling it alright, I assume? You’re here, after all, and not in the med bay.”

“I’m doing my best,” I sighed. “Kylo and my technician are actually really good with helping me deal.” 

“Wow.” He looked impressed. “I don’t know why, but the Supreme Leader doesn’t strike me as someone who would handle that well.”

“I know right?” I gave a weak giggle.

“Well I’m glad, either way.” He smiled at me. “Let me know if there’s ever something I might do to help?” I felt my heart beating in my chest, tears lurking behind my eyes. _Wow. He really is a good friend. _

“Thanks, Duffy. That means a lot to me, like a whole lot.” 

“But of course. You’re certainly tough as a rancor, if that’s something you put up with on a regular basis,” he said, sitting back a little more casually. “As though you didn’t have enough to deal with already, around here!”

“Tell me about it,” I groaned, rolling my eyes but still unable to keep from smiling. _Well, to be fair, a lot of things have improved…_

“Well, tell you what, ducky. How about I be sure and be on the detail to attend to Hux tomorrow? That way you’ll at least have a friend there, while you’re making your decision.” He beamed at me so kindly that I almost got weepy again.

“You don’t have to do that, but if you wanna, I would appreciate it a lot.”

“No trouble. I’ll certainly be there.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” I stood up at my chair, realizing that I wasn’t hungry enough to eat anymore. I wanted, oddly enough, to go back to the training hall and disable a few droids. Sure, I was unbelievably cheered up by what a good friend Mitaka was being. And sure, getting laid had filled me with lots of good chemicals. But the gnawing fears I had about Palpatine, the anxiety around Hux and Phasma, and the overarching goal of Showing Kylo How To Save Himself or whatever you wanted to call it… I was too restless to sleep, so I might as well get really fucking good at swinging a lightsaber. “I gotta go. Thanks again for checking in and eating with me. I do feel better when we talk.” 

“Of course, of course. Carry on-- leave the plate though, I’ll finish it for you,” he whispered with a sly little grin. I grinned back, and made my way down to the training hall. It was empty, thank fuck, because I wasn’t in the mood to throw people out. As soon as the first round of droids came out, I was swinging with all my pent up frustration. It was gonna be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick check-in with our loveliest gay bestie. he's the best <3
> 
> also: y'all are the best readers i'm just saying.


	50. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are complications.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut in this chapter!

Kylo summoned me down to the prison levels first thing in the morning, of course. Might as well get that whole Hux thing out of the way so I can be fucked up about it all day afterwards, right? Whatever. It was inevitable, after all. So, I soldiered up, got dressed up real fancy and mean, and marched my unhappy ass down there. 

It really did fill me with relief immediately when I saw Mitaka standing with the security detail, backed up by half a dozen storm troopers. He gave me a nod and a little, tiny smile. I returned them both before I looked past him at the immense figure of Kylo, who was facing the opening of the hallway that led to Hux’s cell. He turned and regarded me for a minute, clearly really into my outfit choice. 

“Apprentice, are you prepared to pass judgement on the traitor?” he asked me coolly. I felt a strange sense of icy stoicism descend, the mask I had crafted years ago for completely different reasons that basically said ‘I’m totally fine’ even when I totally wasn’t. I met his gaze with it.

“Yes.” 

“Very well. Follow me.” I was surprised he didn’t seem at all annoyed that I didn’t call him ‘sir’, despite the fact that I’d actually just forgotten to, but I guess we both had more important shit to attend to than aggravating one another for once. I filed in behind him and heard the sound of boots falling in behind me. We drew up to a cell that had no window, no way to see into or out of it. Kylo stopped, pressed a button on the console just by the door, and turned to look at me with that intense stare of his.

“Armitage Hux, your fate has been decided.” Now he gave me a nod. I glanced over at Mitaka, who also gave me a nod. Taking a deep breath, I turned to the door of the cell.

“You are guilty of high treason and conspiring to murder the Supreme Leader and myself. The punishment for this is death, by whatever means the Supreme Leader sees fit. Pray it’s a quick way,” I said in a frighteningly calm and professional tone. I looked back at Kylo, whose eyes were blazing. _ Is he, like, angry? And if so, at who? Or is he turned on? Or both? This is the only time I’ve ever felt unhappy that I can’t tell the difference. _ “Any last wishes?” I added, raising an eyebrow. _ I hope he asks for something just so I can refuse it, _ said the cruel little voice in the back of my head. 

Strangely, the speaker on the console only buzzed with static. Did the little ginger shit have nothing to say for himself? That would be a fucking first.

“Hux?” I asked after what felt like a very long moment had passed. Again, there was no reply. I growled. “Oh, alright.” I guess I wasn’t gonna get the satisfaction of saying something shitty to him before he bit it. I nodded at Mitaka, who made to open the door with his guard behind him. It slid open with a familiar hiss. 

The cell inside was empty.

“WHAT?” bellowed Kylo, and now I knew fully exactly how he felt. Mitaka turned around towards us, face gone pallid. “WHERE IS HE??”

“I don’t know, my Lord!” he said. “He wasn’t transferred since his last interrogation!”

“Are you sure?!” Kylo snarled, and I felt myself tense up-- of course I was pissed and worried and even afraid, but if he hurt my friend...

“Absolutely certain, sir.”

“FIND HIM!!” the taller man roared, and Mitaka didn’t even spare me a glance as he nodded a hasty ‘yes sir’ and shuffled off in a hurry, white armor bustling behind him. That was fine with me, though. I didn’t need to get pissed off at Kylo right now. The fuckin’ ship would explode.

“Kylo--” I started, but I was interrupted by the sound of his fist crashing into the metal of the wall and leaving a huge dent there. He was panting, grimacing, making furious sounds. 

“How? How did he escape?” 

“I dunno, but clearly he had another conspirator that wasn’t Phasma,” I answered, rubbing my forehead.

“I will kill _ anyone _ who assisted him,” he snarled. 

“For once I won’t try to change your mind,” I murmured. Morality be damned. This was way worse than having him locked up. “Who knows where the fuck he is? This ship is the size of a massive city, he could be anywhere on it.” 

“I will scour this ship until I make a corpse of him.”

“What if he’s left? Back on the Finalizer, or taken some other ship?” 

“He has no authority to command any of them.”

“He might just be laying low, stowing away until he can do whatever he’s planning.” I was thinking of what I’d do if I were him, honestly. Plotting and scheming some grandiose revenge is absolutely what I’d do if my morality was as royally fucked as Hux’s. “If he’s got a single brain cell, he’s not on any First Order ship.” 

“Indeed,” Kylo growled. “As I’m about to inform every First Order ship that he’s to be apprehended on sight, if not shot.”

“Yeah. I feel that,” I agreed wholeheartedly. “Christ, this is all my fault for taking so long to figure this out.”

“It is the fault of Hux whatever traitors he’s conspiring with, and no one else’s,” he snapped, glaring back at me. Even though he was still acting angry, I felt some relief that he was also defending me to myself. “Unless it’s mine, for not acting quickly myself. But I do not regret giving you this choice. I stand by it.” _ Okay, that’s extremely validating. _ I met his stare, hoping it was clear on my face that I appreciated that a lot.

“So now what?” I asked him, brow furrowed.

“You will remain in my suite at night until he’s found. I believe you can handle yourself when you’re awake, but I won’t have you vulnerable when asleep, if he comes back.” _ Well, okay, there are worse things… _

“Thanks.”

“In the meantime, we resume training just as we were before.”

“Sounds great.”

“We’ll head down to the training hall to work on Form 3.”

“Er,” I said, a little nervously. “There’s one problem with that.” Now his eyes were threatening to flame again.

“What?”

“I, uh, was giving it a little extra practice last night…”

“And?” he asked impatiently.

“I disabled all the targeting droids.” I shrugged sheepishly, sinking my head down into my shoulders. What? I said I was RESTLESS, okay? “I got a little carried away.”

His expression fell almost comically to surprise, and then rapidly progressed to inordinately, dangerously pleased. 

“I suppose you and I will have to spar, then.” 

\-----

Believe it or not, Kylo and I didn’t fuck in the training hall again. I know, lowkey bummer, right? We did spar, but he also brought in troops with blasters for me to maneuver around. He was really intent on getting me comfortable with that fuckin’ saber. In large crowds of attackers, apparently. I got the feeling it was all he could do to rein in his fury. Which meant that he was protecting me from his outrage, since it was in no way directed at me, and he was channeling that energy into training me into a puddle of sweat.

When I got back to my suite to shower and change clothes, I heard my datapad ding. 

**Hey wobbles, you alright? I heard about Hux and I got worried :^( **Oh, sweet Matt. I smiled.

**I’m fine. Kylo says I have to stay in your room from now on, for my own safety. Isn’t that nice?**

**I completely agree with him.**

**I didn’t think you’d object :^)**

**Are you coming up now?** I glanced around the room.

**I was gonna shower and change… I’m gross. Kylo’s trying to make sure I’m trained enough to take on a whole army by myself, I think.**

**Come up and shower here?** Now I smiled even wider.

**Oh, I guess that’ll work…**

**We do have a pretty nice tub, remember? :^)**

**Now that you mention it, I do remember. I’ll pack some stuff and head your way.**

**Okay good! See you soon.**

Well, that was fucking adorable. Of course. Because it was Matt. Also, just thinking about that tub made me excited. I threw some clothes into my satchel along with some of my bathroom stuff. Just before I headed out, I glanced back at my guitar. I’d been slacking some on playing it because training had been going so hard. A pang of guilt washed over me. _ Am I forgetting? _

I went over to grab it and take it with me.

Upon my arrival at The Supreme Bedchamber, Matt was pulling some fresh towels out for me. He waved me back into the bedroom immediately. 

“I got some salts for your sore muscles,” he said, smiling.

“How’d ya know my muscles were sore?” I asked him as I approached. 

“Just a hunch. Plus, mine are too. Kylo’s tense as hell and now I’m feelin’ it,” he groaned. I put a hand on his enormous arm, rubbing the muscle there.

“Two sore beans in a pod. Or, in a tub.” I leaned up to kiss his cheek, and he turned pink. Which was so fucking cute, like hello? We’ve been at this for a minute, and you’re still blushing? 

“Let me make sure it’s not overflowing,” he murmured, and shuffled into the bathroom. I kicked off my shoes and dropped my bag to follow him. There was that fucking tub in all its black and gold glory, brimming with cloudy water full of space-Epsom salts. I sighed, already feeling better. Matt turned the faucet off and hung the towels up, then stepped over to me. His glasses were on this time, and they’d gotten foggy in the steamy room.

“You’re actually an angel, right?” I asked him as I reached up to pull the spectacles off. “Like, you’re some celestial being who inhabits a body sometimes just to fuck with me by being so nice?” 

“You’re silly,” he mumbled, turning even more pink. I tousled his blonde hair. 

“Help me get out of these clothes, hm?” I said quietly, leaning up towards him. He bent down to kiss me, lips languid and light as they danced with mine for a moment. His hands found the hem of my shirt, and he tugged it upwards gently. 

“You really are sweaty, huh?” he asked, grinning impishly. 

“Oh, hush! You’re one to talk,” I giggled, letting him pull the shirt over my head. He smelled musky and salty and divine. 

“Kylo’s really hellbent, isn’t he?” Now his fingers were playing with the waistband of my training pants. I felt myself start to flush a little as they traced along my belly.

“He wants me ready to kill a Sith lord. He said as much.” Finally he gripped the fabric and tugged it down over my hips, kneeling as he went. They hit the ground, and he was pressing his nose into my belly button as one hand came back up over my ass cheek to splay over the small of my back. Swooning a little, I put my hands in his hair. 

“I want you to be ready, too,” he murmured, and I felt his big, soft lips on the delicate skin of my tummy as he spoke. He took in a huge breath through his nose before he rose back up to his feet. I admit, I was slightly sad that didn’t go any further, but I was also sweaty and dying to be not feeling gross anymore. I pressed my hands into his torso, pushing up the fabric of his t-shirt. 

“I want _ you _ to be ready for this bath,” I said, grinning. He smiled and helped me remove the offending article of clothing. My hands were already at his trousers, unbuttoning them. He seemed to not be phased at all by me removing them, revealing his glorious legs (ugh those quads) and his cute little butt. I wanted to touch him, but I also wanted to be in that goddamn tub. So I grabbed his hand and towed him over to the steaming water, giggling. 

“Go ahead, you get in first,” he urged, and his eyes never left me as I climbed up and eased my leg into the water gently. I felt my face and shoulders go slack.

“Oh, it’s so warm,” I sighed. I swung my other leg in, and slowly my body vanished until I was just a head bobbing on the surface. I looked back at the blonde and smiled. “Your turn.” 

God, what a sight to watch Matt climb gently into the bath with me. It was a huge tub, there was lots of room for us both, but he still felt enormous. I floated over to him immediately, pressing our bodies together in the buoyant heat. He smiled and tugged me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me. The water glistened on his shoulders. I wanted to faint, I was so happy. 

“Not so bad, having to stay here, eh?” he asked, grinning.

“I wasn’t complaining, but now that you mention it…” I leaned my head onto him, letting my bones float. _ Uuuugh I could die here. That’d be fine. I’d be happy. _ Then I felt his lips press into my forehead gently. _ Nevermind, NOW I could die here. _ We were quiet for a while, just nestled in the bath together, muscles hungrily soaking up all the magnesium and shit they could. I rubbed my lips lazily on his neck after a while, and felt him tense beneath me. His hands wandered over my torso, mapping me out gently. They found my thighs and my calves, too. It was as exciting as it was relaxing. My nerves started to wake up.

“You, ah, feeling better?” he asked me in a low voice.

“Much,” I sighed. 

“The water’s cooling, if you want to get out and dry off…” I couldn’t help but feel like he had an agenda in suggesting this. Whatever it was, I was fully on board. I gently took a little of the skin of his neck between my teeth, not enough to hurt but enough to make him shiver.

“Sounds nice.” He moved his head enough to rub his nose against mine, touch his lips to mine, and then he slunk away beneath me wordlessly. That tantalizing move left me a little breathless, watching his body emerge from the water. He glistened, all of his skin flushed pink. I sighed. I might never get tired of looking at him. Grabbing the towels, he started to dry off in broad strokes. 

“Can I, uh, can I dry you off?” he asked me a little sheepishly. My heart started to beat a little faster at the prospect. 

“Sure.” I made finally to leave the tub, rising out of the water carefully and climbing out. I stood on the tile floor, dripping, and he stared at me pretty much exactly the same way I stared at him. Throwing his towel over his shoulder, he picked up another one and walked over slowly. 

He knelt before me, eyes roving all over my body. Gently, he began to dry my legs. His huge hands ran over me, pressing the towel onto my skin, and he moved upwards over my stomach and forearms. Rising, he wiped my shoulders gently, then my back, then my chest; like he was cleansing something holy. Then he went back over me in reverse order, taking a knee again. I planted my legs a little wider apart as he dried the inner parts of my knees and thighs. Finally, he ran the towel against the apex of my legs, and I sighed with the sensation. 

He leaned down and placed a kiss on my hip. Butterflies traveled from that kiss up into my stomach, and I watched him raptly as he started to run his bare fingers over my body, and kissed his way across my belly to the other hip. He lowered his other knee, hands kneading softly at my abductor muscles, and my skin crackled with rising anticipation. His nose nuzzled between my legs.

“Oh, Aeon,” he sighed, and his breath landed right where all the heat in my body was starting to originate from. I gasped a little, hands falling over his head once again. “I think about how you taste all the time.”

“Fuck,” I whispered, shivering with a pang of lust. Gently, Matt pushed my hips back to rest my butt on the edge of the tub. He lifted one of my legs over his shoulder, pushed them apart even further. His eyelids were heavy, huge pupils trained on my cunt as he revealed it. I propped myself up a little with one hand on the tub, feeling my fucking bones start to shake with sheer arousal and anticipation. 

Slowly he brought his hand up, running his flat palm over me. I made a quiet little sound when he touched my clit. I couldn’t even bring myself to call him a tease, I was so amazed by his every deliberate touch. His fingers parted the folds of my lips, and he nuzzled my inner thigh before he delicately slipped his tongue out into my cunt. My eyelids fluttered as his lips finally closed over me, heart pounding. At first he was all gentle strokes and lazy swirls. But as soon as he sucked my clit into his mouth, I whimpered and grabbed at his blonde locks. He took his time, like profoundly so, and I was quivering uncontrollably. Finally I felt his fingers begin to stroke my entrance.

“_ Matt, _” I bleated helplessly when two of them plunged inside, just as placid in their pace as everything else he was doing. Another sound left my mouth as they curled against the place he now knew very well. Finally he looked up at my face where my bottom lip was trembling as I struggled for deeper breaths. His eyes were so focused, so intent on watching my pleasure as it rampaged across my face, that I felt myself clench. Steadily he moved his arm and ran his tongue over my clit, unhurried and relentless. A series of incoherent sounds started to bubble out of me as my body got tighter and tighter around him.

“I-- I--” But I couldn’t even say anything by the time my climax blossomed and I felt it lash through my nerves, my hips stuttering and shaking as he pushed me through it with cum dribbling down his chin. I groaned, the last of my orgasm shuddering out of me. “Shhhhiiiit--”

Before I knew what was happening, Matt had hooked one arm under my knees and the other across my back and lifted me into the air. I was still shaking as he laid me down on the bed like I was made of glass. He climbed over me, and I could see his cock demanding his attention. But he stroked my face and leaned down to kiss me in his gentle and sensual way, smearing the taste of me all over the inside of my mouth. 

“Aeon, I want to feel what it’s like inside you so badly,” he murmured into my cheek as he pulled our lips apart. His voice sounded so strained, so desperate, despite his steady attention. I looked at him through bleary eyes, took his face in my hand. 

“I want you to fuck me,” I whispered. The fire in his eyes caught just that quick, and he nudged my legs apart and angled himself over me. I felt his massive cock press against me, but it didn’t make quite the right spot. He probed again, missed again, and I could feel his frustration with himself. 

“Fuck,” he swore. “I’m sorr--”

“Shh.” I threw an arm around his neck. “Lift me up on your lap.” He glanced nervously between my face and our bodies, but his arms came around me. One was supporting my back, the other was under my ass as he lifted me gingerly and I wrapped my legs around his waist instinctively. “There you go,” I cooed softly. His length was pressed into my flesh along my cunt, right where I wanted it. I angled myself carefully, raising up on his hips, and reached around my back to feel his cock, to direct it home. 

I hovered when I knew it was there. I looked up into Matt’s eyes, and they were huge with anticipation and desire. His hands were tight around me, like he was frightened of breaking or mishandling me somehow, but he held my gaze while I slowly, gently lowered myself onto him. We both gasped when his head slipped inside me. As I sank down further, his magnificent girth filling me more and more, I whimpered and shivered. His mouth hung open and his brow wrinkled as he groaned.

“Oh-- oh _ fuck, _ Aeon--”

“God,” I moaned, and even though I’d felt this before-- under entirely different circumstances and with entirely different energies at play, not to mention a very different position-- it was totally overwhelming. He filled me so completely it made me want to scream, but I settled for a ragged, exhilarated sound. We stilled for just a moment, eyes locked, gasping with pleasure. Then I threw my other arm around his neck and started to shift against him, to grind into his lap. He reacted instinctively, slowly pushing to meet me while he groaned. We came to a slow, even rhythm. 

“You-- you feel _ incredible,_” he breathed, a hand snaking up to grasp my cheek with desperate urgency as he pressed our foreheads together. I could only moan in response, my entire body vibrating with joy at how much he loved it, how fantastic it felt. Our thrusts started to pick up speed a little, and get a little harder. My insides were already starting to tie themselves in knots, the edge rising up to meet me.

“Matt,” I whimpered. “I’m gonna--”

“Please cum,” he pleaded. “I want to feel it.”

“_Shit--_” Something about the way he begged me to do it brought my orgasm on faster than I’d expected, and I clenched around him, holding myself utterly still as my eyelids fluttered and my muscles seized in pleasure. Matt’s eyes were wide open, staring at me as he felt me contract around him.

“Oh, Maker,” he groaned, and his hands came tight around my trembling waist. They held me there with impressive strength, and then--

“FUCK!” I cried as his hips began to rut, his hands holding me still while he drove into me. It wasn’t the kind of rough, aggressive urgency that Kylo’s thrusts were. It was slower, but just as hard and intent. His exhales timed with them, and I thought my soul might be departing my body as wave after wave of sensations hit me. “Fuck-- shit-- Matt-- oh-- _ God-- _ please-- don’t-- stop--”

“Rrrrgggh,” he growled, and I knew he was close. My babbling was driven from me with each thrust, like if I didn’t make some sort of noise I might explode.

“It-- feels-- _ so-- _ good-- please-- _ please--_” Then his hips became erratic, the groans and noises he made got louder, his breaths landing harder and harder as he drove into me. I felt the warmth of his seed, and I quaked around him. A final orgasm rolled over me, and my eyes lost focus as a tear fell down each cheek. When it’s that good, sometimes you just spontaneously weep a little. Or I do, at least. I grasped weakly around Matt’s neck, mewling pitifully, unable to stop trembling. He pulled me tight against him, pressing our torsos together and steadying himself as I fell limp over him. 

“I gotcha,” he murmured, nuzzling his nose into my neck. I melted away, delirious. Gently he laid me back down on the bed, pulling himself out before he took his place beside me. Cradling me against his broad chest, I floated away from the world. My legs were still twitching. 

As we laid there breathing in unison, I found myself making constellations out of the little moles that dotted his shoulders. One finger ran over his skin between them, almost automatically, like I had no real control over it because my brain was busy being fucked right out. I could smell him, see him, feel him against me. I sighed mightily, overjoyed.

“Hey, fierce one,” he said quietly, like a greeting. “There you are.” 

“Here I am,” I agreed just as quietly. He smiled. 

“How are you?”

“I’m… in love,” I admitted. He literally blushed again.

“So am I,” he murmured. Well, maybe I was blushing again, too. 

“Much better day, now.”

“I’m glad.” His look was as dreamy as mine. Somewhere in my head I wondered if I should be getting this far gone. Like, maybe ever, but especially with Matt. Then again, why not? My old quibbles about how or why I got sucked into this universe were fading faster and faster. 

“How did it feel?” I asked him softly.

“I can’t describe it,” he sighed. “It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt.” Okay, now I was definitely blushing again. I couldn’t even joke with him about that being an exaggeration; Matt had spent so little time in the body that I was almost 100% sure it wasn’t. 

“Oh, wow.” 

“Aeon,” he sighed into my fuzzy head. “How did I get so lucky as to find you?”

“Um,” I replied, increasingly appalled at how fucking precious he was. “You’re cursed, obviously.”

“If this is a curse, I’m fine with that,” he giggled. “But also, hush.”

“You can’t hush the truth, Matt.”

“Which is why I will continue to say that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, so far. Thank you for that.” He seemed pleased with himself and his rebuttal. 

“Anytime,” I chuckled. He sighed contently, and I curled in close. I was already drifting off, after the incredibly tiring day I’d had. In the haze right before you fall asleep, I felt him kiss my head softly. 

“Dream sweetly, fierce one.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP, the plot thickens :o
> 
> and i mean, also cute smut with Matt <3


	51. Chapter 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I'm in it now, y'all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> definitely smut in this chapter. also, we're touching back down into the plot of RoS.

When I woke up, I was still facing in towards a broad, beautiful chest. Our legs were gently intertwined, and I could feel a strong arm underneath my pillow with its hand splayed across my back. Blinking until my eyes could open more fully, I glanced upward at a large, regal nose, pouty lips, and a pair of dark eyes that were watching me like I was the only thing worth watching. I felt like I was floating in bliss as fingers gently stroked my cheek. 

“Good morning, little one.”

With a blink of surprise, I knew instantly that Kylo was the one holding me like this. I was still drowsy, but the wave of startled butterflies in my stomach was powerful. _ Oh. Oh wow. _

“Good morning,” I mumbled, jaw still tight with sleep.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked. I could see his dark hair now, could feel the strange way that the Force always seemed to cycle between us as soon as we touched. 

“Yes.” I sighed.

“Good.”

“Did you?”

“Better than I expected to.” 

“Good,” I said, smiling a little. _ I could get so very used to this side of him. _“We have training today?”

“Yes, but there’s no hurry,” he replied softly. I was swooning real hard on the inside, y’all.

“Good,” I said again, watching his eyes as they absorbed every detail on my face. I felt so small in his arms, but so treasured in that moment. My heart was flooding with a familiar emotion that I refused to name.

“Do you dream?” he asked me.

“Sometimes. I didn’t dream last night, though. Not that I remember.”

“You spoke in your sleep this morning.” I raised an eyebrow.

“I did? What did I say?”

“You asked me not to go. I don’t know where, you just said ‘please don’t go.’” His face seemed almost sad, like he was worried at how desperate I must’ve sounded.

“Oh,” I breathed, uncertain. I really couldn’t remember dreaming about anything. But if I’d asked him not to go somewhere, I felt sure it had to be to Exegol. Where else was I anxious about him going to?

“I was hoping you’d remember, in case it was some sort of dream-vision.”

“I wish I did.” His fingers stroked my face again, incredibly tender. 

“It’s alright,” he cooed. “Dreams find us eventually, if they’re important enough.”

“Do you dream?” I asked, echoing his question back to him.

“Sometimes,” he replied, echoing my answer. “I dreamed about you, before you came here.” _ That _ caught my attention.

“Wait, really?”

“I saw a body curled up inside my command shuttle, just like you were when the engineering crew found you. The Force was everywhere around you in the dream, but I didn’t feel that when you were actually there.” _ Probably because I wasn’t connected to it yet, _ I thought. _ And was about to be heavily in denial that this wasn’t a hallucination. _ “The Force is everywhere around you now, though,” he added in a strange tone. Almost like he was… in awe. Again. That sounded so unusual on him, yet I was hearing it more and more.

“Just like it’s everywhere around you?” I asked quietly. His thumb ran over the scar on my cheek, and he was silent for a moment.

“I’ve been thinking about something you said to me once. About how I had the choice to be here.” _ Wow, he’s really talking about some real shit today, I guess? _ I felt my heart skip.

“Oh yeah?”

“I never felt like I did.” For a split second, I saw something-- a memory, maybe?-- of Snoke looming over him. Something was on fire nearby. He felt overwhelming terror, and a paradoxical desire to run right towards it. As though there was something even worse behind. That emotion was profoundly, intimately relatable to me.

“Yeah, I know,” I murmured, reaching up to touch his face. “That’s why I said it. Not just ‘cuz I was upset.”

“You always know,” he almost whispered, like he couldn’t believe it. “But how do I choose? When it seems so clear what I have to do?” I felt a whole army of feelings tumble around in my gut about how to answer that question. But I’d been on my own learning curve, showing up here. A curve that opened more possibilities than I’d ever imagined, outside the scope of my life before.

“Well, I try to consider everything I could do. Then I think about what I wanna do. Then I think about what I think I oughta do, and even more than I used to, I try to know _ why _ I’d do anything. If I don’t know why, I just end up flying on impulse. And fuck knows where those impulses come from-- rarely places or people who have my best interests in mind. Or even know what they are.”

“How do you know what they are?” 

“I try to trust myself to know. Which, as you might can imagine, is really not easy for me,” I chuckled wryly. “But I mean, if I get it wrong, I reckon I’m one step closer to knowing what’s right.” 

Y’all might think I talk a big game, for someone who’s been kinda fucked up for most of this story. And maybe you’re right, but the process of learning this shit I’d been trying to distill from my prolonged time in therapy ain’t always pretty. Or easy. Or fun. But that’s why I had an answer at all, because I worked so hard on it. And now Kylo was seeing something in me, some purpose for my struggle, that I’d been having a hard time seeing for myself. He looked at me with almost a smile on his face.

“Such strange wisdom, my apprentice brings me.”

“Looks like we learn a lot from each other, huh?” I let a little smirk hang on the corner of my mouth. It was kinda awesome, how much calling me his apprentice had turned into a title of respect instead of a designation of rank that was below his own. He smirked back at me and leaned his forehead into mine.

“Shower with me,” he cooed. His ability to turn an order into a plea was also something I was getting fond of.

“Alright,” I agreed, and we slid out of bed and into the bathroom. I watched him move, his body so much more tense and obviously powerful than when Matt was piloting. He was also watching me, and his eyes started to blacken as he stood in front of the shower entrance and turned the water on. 

“What?” I asked him coyly as his stare raked down my body and back up it with ravenous intensity. 

“You’re captivating,” he murmured. I blushed instantly, all my sass drained by his praise as I realized this was the first time he’d actually seen me completely naked. Moving close to me and slipping his hands around my waist, he drew me back into the fall of hot water. It fell on his back and ran in rivulets down his neck and over his shoulders, onto my hands where they rested against his enormous chest. He leaned down and pressed his nose into my cheek, letting his open mouth hover just in front of mine as my whole body grew taut.

“Kylo--” My breathy moan was cut off by his lips as they claimed mine, his hands pulling me into his muscular body. The water fell onto me and ran over my skin, trickling down my legs. His cock was already pressing into my belly, and I could feel myself getting hot very fucking quickly. I remembered Matt’s especially gentle brand of slow, patient need where he wanted to be so sure he was pleasing me, not hurting me, tending me so thoroughly. Kylo’s brand of worshipful hunger was rougher, more demanding but just as focused. For once I felt like I was melting in his arms, instead of pushing back against him in a battle of wills.

I let my hand trail down his body, run slowly over his hard length. He growled into my mouth, and his hand suddenly pushed me by the chest back firmly against the wall of the shower. He wasn’t hurting me, but he held me fast there as his other hand dove between my legs to run up the slickness there. He swirled a finger around the nub of my clit and I shuddered, moaning.

“Already so wet for me,” he crooned, eyes on my face as he slid two fingers inside me without ceremony or prelude. My mouth fell open as I gasped, noises escaping me as he began to work his hand. I saw his chest start to rise and fall with his breath as it got heavier, fire in his black eyes. The muscles in my pelvic floor were working to hold onto the terrific, mounting tension there as it threatened to escalate. His palm pushed up and down against my clit, his fingers curling harder and harder against my g-spot. “Your every sound is intoxicating.”

“K-Kylo,” I panted, already so keyed up I could feel myself close to the edge.

“Yes, little one?” he growled, and the predatory smile on his face made me feel a pang of something like fear and excitement rolled into one.

“I’m-- I’m so close--”

“Would you like to cum?”

“Yes!”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes _ please!_” At that, he pulled his fingers out of me in an infuriating paradox.

“Not yet,” he growled.

“Kylooo,” I whined. 

“Patience,” he cooed, and I glared up at him. This only caused him to smile more as he took my chin in his hand, gripping it tightly. “_ There’s _ that fierceness.” He slid his fingers into my mouth. I took them enthusiastically, keeping eye contact as he stared. His hand left my chest, instead grabbing one of my thighs and lifting it up around his waist. I felt his needy length standing up along the curve of my cunt, fitting to it almost perfectly. He removed his fingers, a trail of spit hanging behind them. Immediately they snaked down over my clit, rubbing it intently and making the nerves under my skin crackle back to life.

“Oh _ fuck!_” I swore between gasps. The head of his cock was running ever so slowly against my entrance, and I bucked my hips, desperate to feel him inside me. But his hand gripped my ass cheek firmly and held me away from it. “Uuuugh,” I groaned, legs twitching as his fingers kept at their task.

“I love watching you crumble, little one. How your strength gives way to your need, how your need is conquered by your pleasure. The pleasure _ I _ give you,” he said, eyes blazing.

“_Ohmigod,_” I mewled, his words drawing shivers of lust up from the deepest part of me. The edge was approaching again under his nimble fingers, and I longed to hurl myself off it. His cock was still teasing me, sliding between my ass cheeks while he worked my clit, and it was driving me nuts. “Kylo!”

“Is there something else you want?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“Tell me, little one.”

“I-- _ ahh-- _ I want you to fuck me, please,” I gasped. His fingers slowed, as though he could tell how close I was getting, and I wanted to scream as I pushed my hips up against him.

“You want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, yes _ sir--_”

“Oh, how good you’re being,” he cooed, delighted. “Listen to you, begging me so prettily with that filthy, gorgeous mouth. Do you want it that badly?”

“Yes! P-please, sir! I-- I _ need _ it--”

“_Need _ it? Need what?” His fingers were still running slow circles on my clit, the head of his cock twitching against my opening as though he was testing his own patience.

“I need you-- oh, _ fuck!-- _ need you inside me, sir! Please, _ p-pleaase_,” I nearly shouted. “_Please, _ sir!” He could have all the ‘sirs’ he wanted if it meant he would have mercy on me. He leaned his lips over to my ear. 

“Anything for my apprentice,” he growled, and finally his hand lifted my ass cheek enough for him to shift his hips and let me sink down onto him. _ Jesus fucking Christ. _ The breath was driven from my lungs as that truly gorgeous thing filled me up again, less violently than he had before, less gently than Matt had. He snarled against my cheek.

“Ooooh my fucking _ God_,” I gasped, my legs shaking, the one that was still on the floor holding me up valiantly and the other one curled as tightly as it could around him.

“Fuck!” He held me in place by my ass cheeks for a moment when he was sheathed fully inside me. It mirrored my experience with Matt in a strange way, as he took a moment to savor the impossibly delicious sensation of our bodies interlocking. “_Aeon,_” he groaned into my ear, sending sparkles everywhere within me.

“Kylo,” I breathed, stars in my eyes as I felt just how much he was enraptured by every sensation that ricocheted between us. His fingers tightened on my glutes, and then he began to fuck me with slow, powerful thrusts. I cried out, my arms flying up over his shoulders, nails digging into his skin.

“Is this-- fuck-- what you wanted?” he asked, his voice ragged and his breath hot on my cheek.

“Yes,” I said weakly between thrusts.

“For me-- argh-- to fill you-- fill you up-- like this?”

“Yes!” 

“Are you grateful-- _ shit--_”

“_Yes!_” I shouted, my body tightening everywhere as his torso banged up against my sensitive clit and his cock pounded up into me, starting to pick up speed. “Thank you, thank you sir!”

“For what?”

“Thank you-- _ aaah-- _ for fucking me-- sir!!”

“Thank _ you-- _ rrgh-- for giving me-- this-- _ perfect-- _ little cunt,” he panted. I was vaguely aware that my foot was no longer touching the tile floor, leg dangling limply at his side. “To-- _ fuck!-- _ to fill up-- to fucking _ ravage--_”

“Yes-- sir!” I groaned as his hips began to rut much faster. “Its s-so _ gooood _, aaaahhh!”

“You-- agh-- you _ love _ it-- don’t you?”

“Yes I do-- sir!” I was about to run out of words I could even remember how to say, but I swear to God Kylo was so mouthy and I was loving every single second of it as my twice-delayed orgasm started to loom, huge, like a dam ready to burst. “I l-love it!”

“You love-- _ what? _”

“_I love your cock filling me up and fucking me sir you’re gonna make me cum sir!_” I sobbed out as fast as I could, a string of words that felt like they were about to be lost if I didn’t just expel them immediately.

“You better not-- fucking-- cum-- rrgh-- until I-- _ shit!-- _until I tell you to!” he snarled into my ear as he pressed his face hard against mine, nails digging into my ass, and I wanted to pitch a fit and scream and cry. 

“Fuuuck!” I bawled. “Pleeeease!”

“Hold it in!” he barked, and there was something desperate in his voice. I started shaking my head violently. 

“I can’t-- I can’t--”

“Yes you can!-- _ Fuck-- _ hold it-- and beg for it!” His hips started to frenzy and it was all I could do to draw every muscle in my body in tight, holding my breath and clinging to my orgasm for dear life lest it spill. Apparently I’ve very obedient once you get me into a certain state.

“Kyloooo, please sir!”

“Please-- what?”

“_Please _ let me cuu-uu-uuum,” I wailed.

“Who-- fuck-- _ who _ lets you cum??”

“You do, sir!”

“_Who???_” He was furious, almost distraught.

“Master Ren! M-Master Ren lets me cum!!”

“Whose master?”

“My master, _ my _ master--”

“That’s right-- little one-- your master-- your _ master _ lets you cum-- on his cock-- like-- aaaaargh _ fuck!-- _ like a good-- little apprentice!” I have no idea how he was holding back either, at that point, to be honest. 

“_Pleeeeeee-ee-ease,_” I keened, totally unashamed of how pitiful I was. I could feel myself about to explode.

“You-- rrgh-- you can cum,” he finally, FINALLY fucking said, and instantaneously I seized up and clamped down on him like a vice. My body spasmed uncontrollably as the most profound orgasm I’d ever had pulsed through it, searing my nerves and wracking my muscles and shredding my mind. All my pathetic babbling and pleading stopped, the breath I’d held for so long driven from my lungs until--

His guttural, almost bellowing growls gave him away, and he kept fucking me as he came inside me and I gasped over and over and my body kept contracting and _ holy shit it’s still happening-- _

“I’m still- I’m still-- I can’t-- _ stop--_” Without missing a beat he pulled out of me, held me up with one hand as the other flew down to my clit and started rubbing it _ furiously-- _

“AaaaAAAAARGH!” I screamed, voice torn as my climax turned white-hot and savage and almost painful except that I couldn’t feel pain, could only feel a pleasure that bordered on it as it bolted through me light lightning, radiating from my abused clit--

“Fuck _yes,_” Kylo swore ragged and primal as I heard his frenzied finger movements turn into a pleasant, wet slapping sound as I came into his hand, my cunt pushing it out desperately as the final act of my orgasm finally descended. Nobody had ever made me hold it in that long in my life, and I would’ve been shocked if I'd still had the wherewithal to think at all. “That’s it!” I didn’t even see him kneel down in front of me, didn’t know he was moving at all until his hand was replaced suddenly by the sensation of his hot, wet mouth clamping down over my clit, suckling it and flicking his tongue over it and plunging what felt like three fingers up inside me. My eyes flew wide open.

“JESUS CHRIST!” I shrieked, convinced I might actually die right then and there. It was like he’d unlocked something inside my body, like if he just kept touching me I’d never be able to stop, and I didn’t know if I could stand it. He dug into me with his fingers, lubricated with his own seed, digging out even more of that orgasm, and I think I might’ve gone blind. “KYLO, GOD, FUCK! FUCK I CAN’T-- AAAAH!!” 

There was no way my legs were working, no way any part of my body was doing anything of its own volition anymore; he had to be using the Force to keep me upright as another fountain issued from my cunt and into his greedy mouth, more than I’d even thought possible. I howled, realizing that I was still sobbing and weeping, wondering faintly if I was going to heaven or to hell without any real emotional attachment to the concept since I wasn’t sure I believed in either, anyway. I forgot how to move my mouth, how to form words, and started babbling. I don’t know what happened to make him decide he was satisfied, but he finally stood up and I collapsed into his arms at some point, body still awash in sensations that almost hadn’t decreased in intensity at all, yet. 

I felt him hold me under the gentle rain of the showerhead, felt one of his hands softly washing the cum from my legs and the sweat from my body. Every touch radiated through me, dancing on the waves of whatever divine (or possibly demonic) experience had just been delivered to me. He kissed my face and lifted me up to carry me out of the shower. I felt a soft thing land over me, felt us sway a little, felt him place me down gingerly on another soft thing-- the bed-- like I would shatter at any moment. I’m serious when I say I do not remember seeing any of this, just the dilated sensations of his hands gently drying my skin with a towel. He was even more delicate than Matt had been, like his lack of experience either with my body or with being this careful at all made him extra afraid of harming me somehow. I felt every emotion that was radiating off him, intense fascination and patient reverence and a deep sense of responsibility, an overwhelming desire to protect. When he was satisfied with his task, he held me in his arms, slid his legs under mine. I knew his eyes were riveted on me, watching my face as he stroked every part of me he could reach with feathery touches.

Somewhere in whatever space I’d entered, the feeling of overwhelm started to fall smooth and even. It’s hard to describe it, but I could actually feel _ everything. _ I was expansive, making room for every star and planet and mote of dust in a galaxy far, far away. I don’t think it was just the sheer physically transcendent state I’d been catapulted into. Honestly, if Kylo hadn’t been there, I’m not sure I would’ve felt that at all. The Force flowed through us both, refracted through our connection.

I wasn’t yet lucid enough to know consciously what they were, but little bright places were starting to flicker out at me. Like dots of a constellation, there was a smattering of presences that all drew leylines between themselves; if the galaxy was a map they were strewn out all over it. I drifted slowly down towards one of them.

Suddenly, the same face I’d woken up to that morning swam into focus. But there was something more in it this time, as he breathed a little deeper, watched something he hadn’t been able to see before. 

“Kylo,” I whispered, the first word that I could remember how to speak.

“Aeon,” he replied so softly, and in an echo of that morning he took my face in his hand. I had the strangest feeling, then, almost like we were one. Which was weird, and would normally have freaked me out, to be honest. I definitely associate that kind of feeling with codependence, and with some of the nastiest parts of my life. But it wasn’t quite the same thing now. It was like… I dunno. Like I _ belonged _ here. We stared into one another’s eyes, the resounding silence of whatever had just happened wrapped around us. “How do you feel?” he asked me finally.

“Subdued,” I replied, almost smiling. I mean to be fair I really let him subdue me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. He chuckled.

“My fierce little thing.” His smile was… I’d never seen such a sweet, sincere look of joy on his face. Something about it was almost sad, but maybe that was just how it seemed when he finally lost the last shred of his angry mask.

“Do you feel that?” I whispered, hoping.

“Yes,” he replied immediately, without hesitation. My heart pounded. Whatever this huge, ineffable thing was… he felt it too.

“What is it?” I felt tears gathering in my eyes.

“I don’t know.” He stroked my face. “But it’s you. It was always you. Just waiting to be what you are.” 

Oh yeah, I was definitely crying.

“Please don’t go,” I murmured, suddenly struck with a fear that came from nowhere (except really, it came from trauma) that this was going to go away. Not even just Kylo-- all of it. He looked surprised, and I remembered what I’d said in my sleep.

“I never will,” he cooed, trying to reassure my inexplicable anxiety. “Matt won’t either. Or Ben.” I wrapped my hand around his wrist, squeezing it. I knew he couldn’t reassure me that Lucky or Mitaka or even Luke’s ghost would stay, or anyone else who I hadn’t met yet, here. But more than anything it was that feeling that I belonged that I was scared of losing.

“This is my story, too,” I breathed. “I’m not afraid of that anymore.”

“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met,” he said. I laughed weakly.

“Really?” _ Sounds fake, but okay. _

“Yes. I want to be as brave as you,” he told me in earnest. I knew in my gut that this was the entire crux of his redemption. 

“You can be.” I reached out to touch his face with the tips of my fingers, realizing how real he was all over again. “I know you are.” He stared back at me, and I could tell he was uncertain. But this was the first time I’d said something kind about him where I think he’d started to believe me.

Out of nowhere, his communicator buzzed on the bedside table. His brow wrinkled with surprise, and he turned away from me to answer it.

“Supreme Leader,” hailed a voice on the other end.

“What is it?” he asked, glancing back over at me. I felt my heart start to pound, realizing what was happening seconds before the voice replied.

“We’ve found the Wayfinder.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaAAAH okay. *puts away the feels brought on by this chapter*
> 
> thank you so much for commenting, i love love love hearing from y'all! i gotta say, i'm really interested in the number of concerned parties that this might be a situation Matt's not happy about! it's very exciting to me that y'all are truly seeing them as different people since my DID friends maintain that that's important and that their alters all feel like their own person; other people not believing or respecting that is a big issue for DID folks from what i've learned. but then we get into the very interesting nuances of being a system in one body, and to Matt and Kylo's specific relationship with one another which i know y'all don't know as much about, just yet. let me just say that you WILL hear from Matt about it here in a little while, promise.
> 
> 'cept right now we got some plot to deal with, innit!
> 
> PS- the thing where your body can just keep doing the orgasm thing IS possible, by the way. i'm not making that up. maybe not for every single body, but uh. it's real. can confirm. k bye ._.


	52. Chapter 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where the fun begins.... kinda?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm delving into a part of the RoS plot that actually isn't explored or even fully explained in the movie, but i still figured i'd give a heads up.

For the first time ever, I was standing with Kylo in this huge boardroom on the command level. There were an array of officers, none of whom looked familiar except for Mitaka, who was stiff with anxiety but kept throwing me little glances in solidarity. I stood back away from from the circle with my arms crossed as Kylo put his fists on the table.

“Has no one located Armitage Hux?” he growled, and several faces blanched. 

“No sir,” Mitaka said promptly. “He’s not on the ship, and no reports of his presence have come over from anywhere else in the fleet.”

“The moment anyone learns his whereabouts, I want to be informed.” He stood up and faced them all gravely. “If I learn that anyone-- _ anyone-- _ has assisted a traitor, they will meet the same fate he does.” There was a murmur of _ yes, sirs _ around the room, and a few nods. “What of the Wayfinder?”

“It’s on Mustafar, in the old fortress of Lord Vader, sir,” came a woman’s voice from the other end of the room. Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I glanced at Kylo’s enormous form. _ Shit. _ I watched his fists clench at his sides. “It’s reportedly guarded by Alzamac cultists.”

“I will take my Knights,” he replied. “And the 709th legion. We’ll storm the fortress and overpower them.” My guts started to churn. 

“Shall I prepare the command shuttle, my Lord?” asked a different man.

“No. I will be traveling in the Whisper. My forces will go separately. When we obtain the Wayfinder, I’ll be traveling to Exegol immediately. Alone.” Now, my guts stopped dancing and simply dropped through the floor. _ Fuck. This cannot be good. _

“What of the Imminent Apprentice?” came Mitaka’s voice, quietly. He glanced at me, his worry plain on his face. I felt my heart start to throb in my chest. Slowly, Kylo turned around to look at me. His eyes were dark, serious, but they still held something of that deep longing I’d so recently been shown. He said nothing. I swallowed.

“I’m going with you.” My voice sounded much steadier than I’d expected it to. A light came into his eyes that I wondered if I was gonna regret putting there.

“I’ll have the second seat installed in the Whisper right away,” said the voice of the man whose primary concern appeared to be transportation. As Kylo turned back around, Mitaka was looking at me. His expression said _ I’m afraid for you. _ I met his eyes, my heart touched by how sincerely he cared. I tried with all my might to make my face say _ don’t be. _

“Begin preparing for departure immediately. Back to your stations,” the Supreme Leader of the First Order said, and each body rose from their seats and began to file out of the room. Mitaka brazenly marched right up to me and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. 

“Be careful, ducky,” he implored me quietly. I nodded.

“We will.” The Lieutenant knew he’d technically acted out of turn, so he turned and exited rapidly without looking at Kylo. I felt equal parts frightened and fortified by his friendship. Kylo was looking at me, apparently not bothered by his subordinate’s behavior at all.

“Are you ready?” he asked me, still so serious. I held my head a little higher, and even though I was scared shitless, something else was there, too. Maybe just the willingness to feel that way, because it was completely reasonable to, but this was happening anyway. Which is what bravery feels like, I reckon.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” He nodded, and turned to leave. I filed in behind him, my heart beating in time with his furious steps.

\-----

When we dropped out of hyperspace above the smoldering planet of Mustafar, I felt for the first time the overwhelming presence of the dark side of the Force. Pain was everywhere, like a wound in the energy of everything around. It was all over the place, like tendrils reaching out towards me. My breath caught in my throat, and Kylo glanced back at me from his foremost seat inside the Whisper, which was an extremely sexy version of a TIE fighter, basically.

“I want you to stay close to me,” he said as the ship descended towards the surface. “Remember your training, and remember that all my knights and every trooper down there is under your command.” 

“I will,” I nodded, and I could tell I was starting to dissociate. My guts stopped churning, my heart slowed down, my limbs started to feel like they were being piloted from afar.

“Hey!” he snapped. “Stay with me!”

“I’m right here!” I said, confused.

“You were fading. I felt it.” _ Shit. Do I get disconnected from the Force when I dissociate? That lines up… _

“Fuck,” I swore, and I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, tried to feel it sink into my body from my lungs. I could feel how anxious I was once again, and I hated it.

“There you go,” he murmured. “Stay with me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Something might happen to me, Kylo,” I pointed out. I wasn’t even trying to be obtuse, but this was a huge part of the shit he needed to get real about. “But don’t be afraid of that.”

“How could I not be afraid of that?” he asked me, brow furrowed.

“You’re right,” I realized. “What I mean is… be brave. Fear is what lets you do that. Be brave with me.” I met his eyes, full of acute awareness that shit was about to be so fucking scary. But I felt the comforting weight of my lightsaber on my belt, and I knew I would never have made it this far without his help. And I felt a lot braver than I'd expected to.

He said nothing, only let his eyes linger on mine before turning back to look out at the approaching planet. Strangely, it looked like there was snow falling, a thin blanket of it on the ground. Really dirty snow.

We made landfall without a thud or jerk. He really was an amazing pilot. I unlatched myself as the pod opened. He was already climbing out, and he held out his arm for me to lean on as I followed him. The air smelled like charred wood, molten rock. As I touched him, I felt our connection through the Force awaken, thrumming between us in that familiar way. My feet hit the ground, and as it formed into little cloudy puffs around my boots, I realized it wasn’t snow on the ground. It was ash.

I heard the thunderous sound of engines behind us as another shuttle, this one packed to the gills with armed forces, struck ground. We watched as troopers filed out in neat rows and stood at attention, and then I saw six figures shrouded in black clothing and armor emerge behind them. 

_Shit. The Knights of Ren._ They were spooky as hell, so I elected not to look at them. Instead I reminded myself that I was technically their boss, and looked ahead. There were tall, blackened trees surrounded by swirling eddies of vapor and smoke. Ahead, the reddish light that blanketed the planet grew almost opaque with the heavy air. 

“We make for the fortress, and kill all in our path,” Kylo commanded, his voice turning to steel. He looked at me, then marched forward, his cloak flowing behind him. My saber was already in my hand as I followed, dozens of boots marching behind me.

It didn’t take long before I felt something, and without even thinking I activated my purple blade and knocked something out of the air that was aimed right at me. It was a knife, I realized as it clattered to the ground half-melted. Kylo had drawn his own weapon and was already looking around for whoever (or whatever) had thrown it.

Then a terrible cry came through the air, a volley of blaster shots right behind it. My muscle memory took over and I swung my saber to knock the ones nearby away as figures emerged from the the hazy woods ahead. One of them caught a deflected blast and hit the ground immediately, and I felt my body grow tight as I started walking on my toes, ready to move as quickly as I knew how. The were all wrapped in some kind of fabric or maybe armor, strange pale eyes glowing from openings in their hooded masks.

Before I had time to think about being afraid, the battle had begun.

My memory of that experience is really fuzzy, full of the smell of smoke and the strange, terrible sounds the Alzamac made as they were struck down. I stayed close to Kylo just like he’d asked me to; he felt like some kind of compass, the Force always pointing me back towards him. I was deflecting fire like a motherfucker, sending shots pinging back at their gunmen left and right. When they got close enough, Kylo charged them-- and sometimes there were more than one, or even more than two, and my saber left holes in more than a few of them. I knew there were a helluva lot of them, because I could hear the knights and troopers battling their way through the fray on all sides.

Finally we forged ahead towards the outside of a structure of some kind, and there was a gate in front of us. We fought our way through it, ahead of our backup, and the dance that had so often happened between me and Kylo started to happen again. But this time, we were perfect compliments to one another, not opposing sides. Once again, he was ruthless and powerful and I was moving in fluid, rapid circles around him. My heart was pounding, my body never stopped moving. We didn’t call out to one another, didn’t communicate our next strikes-- we didn’t have to. It was natural as breathing, and deadly as not.

When the last one fell, a profound silence was left in its wake. We stood panting a few feet away from each other, familiar heat flowing through and between us. I realized we were in some kind of courtyard, and ahead there was a weird little building. He looked at me, and I knew we both knew that was where it was. 

He marched over to it, did something I couldn’t see. When he turned back around, he was holding a small pyramid-shaped object in his hand that was covered in markings. 

“That’s it?” I asked, surprised. “That little thing?”

“It fits into the navigational computer,” he said. “The code for how to reach Exegol is embedded in it.” I raised an eyebrow. _ Sounds like some shit JJ Abrams made up, again. _ I was about to make a smartass comment, but I stopped. Somewhere, deeper in the fortress, there was… I wasn’t sure what. But something was pulling at me.

“Do you feel that?” I asked him, eyes wandering to the entryway that was behind the little structure we’d arrived at. The rest of the building was massive, a spire of black rock that looked like something right outta_ Lord of the Rings. _ He glanced the same way I was looking.

“What?” he asked, brow furrowing. 

“There.” I nodded in that direction. “Inside.” He narrowed his eyes, and suddenly he seemed to get it.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But it’s calling me.” I felt my heartbeat start to rise again, felt an overwhelming urge to find out what it was. I took a few steps towards the entryway. 

“Aeon,” Kylo called, and I stopped and looked at him. His face was, of all things, worried. “Are you sure?”

“No,” I replied quietly, shaking my head. “But I’m going.” I turned and started walking, turning my light saber off. I heard him follow suit, and as we entered the massive arch, our footsteps echoed inside it. 

It occurred to me that it was entirely possible, even likely, that this was the dark side trying to tempt me. But there was only one way to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not a long chapter, but DAMN y'all Aeon's gettin' good!!


	53. Chapter 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is beautiful and it absolutely fucking hurts.

The innards of the fortress were dark, strangely lit by openings in the ceilings now that the old electrical light sources were long since dead. Some of the openings in the ceilings were made by weapons of some kind, others looked to be part of the architecture. I followed the tug of the Force as it led me blindly in, Kylo close behind me with the Wayfinder in his hand.

We came to more than one crossroads of hallways, but I always knew where to turn. I frankly assumed we’d end up in a big throne room, or some other chamber of equal importance. So when I rounded an unassuming corner to see a figure on the floor slumped up against the wall, I was surprised. Both of us halted, and strained to see who was there in the dim light. 

Then, his head turned, and there was no mistaking that helmet.

“Anakin?” I asked, and for some reason that was the name that came to mind despite literally everything about where we were, about what he looked like, even about why we were there in the first place, just screamed DARTH VADER in big bold letters. I heard the scrape of his breathing behind the vocoder.

“Aeon,” came that voice that was like no other. “We meet at last.” _ Apparently my reputation precedes me among people who are supposed to be dead, _ I thought. _ Except… he IS dead? He doesn’t look like a Force ghost. He looks as real as any hallucination. _“And you’ve brought my grandson.”

Behind me, I felt Kylo’s breath catch in his throat, and I realized that even if this was a hallucination, I wasn’t the only one having it, for once.

“Grandfather,” he breathed, and the little pyramid clattered to the floor. The sheer weight of this moment for him struck me like an arrow. _Oh, fuck._

“Come here, you two, and help an old man.” In that moment he sounded more like Anakin than Vader in word choice, even if the voice was the same. I stepped closer and Kylo moved past me to his other side. I knelt, putting our heads at the same level. He looked like he was in pain, collapsed on the floor like he was. 

“You’re not really here, are you?” I asked.

“I am always here,” he replied. “As long as this terrible place remains standing.” _ Is it bad that what he said made perfect sense to me? _ I nodded. His helmet turned to look up at Kylo. “Do you think me weak, grandson?” he asked. 

“No,” Kylo replied, almost in a whisper. He staggered to his knees, his face was full of pain and conflict. “You were never weak, grandfather.”

“And yet I was,” Vader replied. “I was weak enough to fear being alone. Then I threw everyone that mattered most away, in my desperation, and so made myself totally alone.”

I felt my heart break, and saw tears fill Kylo’s eyes. The depth to which he was hearing his own story played back at him, I knew, was overwhelming. Now there were tears in my eyes, too. I had done a helluva lot of crying, lately, more than I could remember doing in a long time.

“How… how can I… be free of it?” Kylo choked out, stifling sobs.

“Fear will always be with you, grandson. You cannot turn it away, no matter how powerful you become.” Finally a sob escaped Kylo, his face crumpling as he wept. “There are other things you can turn away, but you will always regret doing so.”

“Like love,” I murmured, and Vader turned the massive black eyes of his helmet towards me. I felt everything he was saying in my guts, now, too. All the times in my life that I’d run away, or self-sabotaged, or made monsters to fight where there might have been none were flashing through my head. And all the people I’d lost in the process.

“Your apprentice is very wise,” Vader said, and I like to think he smiled at me under there. I felt a lot less cheesy saying that word now, too. Kylo’s red eyes swam up towards me, the smallest glimmer of hope in them.

“They are,” he agreed softly. I reached out across his grandfather’s body to him, and felt his gloved hand take mine and squeeze it tight.

“Do not cling to your pain as I did, Kylo,” said Vader, and I felt strangely certain that he knew which alter he was talking to specifically because he didn’t fall back on calling him Ben. “Or you may never be free of it.” 

Kylo reached out and tried to touch his grandfather, but his hand passed through him like smoke. Suddenly what he’d said before about being here as long as his old fortress was standing made even more sense to me. Tentatively, I reached out with my other hand and rested it on Vader’s shoulder. It felt as solid, as real to me as anything else. Kylo stared at me, confounded. 

“Will you release me?” the vocoder scratched, sounding weary and hopeful. I nodded.

“Try again,” I urged Kylo gently, and he looked doubtful as he reached up once more. This time, his hand landed on Vader’s other shoulder, and he sucked in a startled breath. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You get used to how real it feels.” 

The Force was converging on us, a triad of bright places in its fabric calling on its power. It sang through me, through Kylo, through Vader himself, and reached out like roots beneath the massive tower of stone and metal. Somewhere inside, I heard a deep, terrifying rumble. Kylo looked at me, eyes wide.

“Aeon, if it falls while we’re--”

“Trust me,” I said, my eyes bright. For the first time ever, the entire Force was with me, and I could feel it in my bones.

Before our very eyes, the huge black figure of Vader melted, shifted, glimmered… and became Anakin in his Jedi robes. His beautiful, gentle eyes rose above their dark circles, and his weary face bent into a smile. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly, and there was an immense crack like lightning that rang through the fortress we were in. As the ceiling began to crumble above us, he vanished under our palms. Nearby, a huge piece of stone crashed into the floor, and I looked up at Kylo just as he looked up at me. I grabbed his other hand, and shut my eyes.

When I opened them, we were kneeling in the ash by his ship. 

“Aeon,” he said, staring at me. “How did--”

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me,” I chanted, smiling to myself. _Guess who’s never seen Rogue One? That guy._ Kylo’s face lit up, and he towed me upward by my hands as he stood and pulled me into him, his lips diving towards mine in the closest thing to pure joy I’d ever seen him show. His arms wrapped around me, lifting me off the ground and spinning me around in the air as he kissed me. I clamped my arms around his neck and giggled into his mouth despite myself.

“You’re amazing,” he said breathlessly as he bent to slowly return my feet to standing and I stopped clinging to him.

“You taught me,” I reminded him, smiling. Sure, I did just pull some badass shit, but it seemed reasonable to remind him that he'd given me some of what I needed to get there. His hands came up to either side of my face and held it as he kissed me again, urgent and hopeful and _ happy-- _

“Wait, the Wayfinder,” he said suddenly, breaking away from me, shock striking the joy from his face. But I looked down at the ground a few feet away, and sure enough, there was a little pyramid-shaped object on the ground. His eyes followed mine, and he let out a sigh of relief. “Fuck!”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He just looked back at me and grinned, bending down to steal one more kiss before he broke away. 

“We have to go,” he said, and my heart sank as I remembered the place we were going. He tugged his communicator out and turned it on. “We’ve found it. All units, return to the Supremacy at once,” he commanded into it.

“Yes, sir, Supreme Leader Ren,” said a voice in reply. Tucking the thing away, he turned and picked up the Wayfinder from the ashy ground. I looked up at him, our moment of bliss totally wrecked by the looming specter of Emperor Fuckface. 

“Don’t worry, little one,” he said gently to me. “We can do this.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, fully unconvinced.

“I’ve never been more sure.” I took a deep breath. _That makes one of us, but here goes nothing._

“Okay. Let’s go.” He smiled at me, and opened the hatch of the Whisper. Just as he was about to step inside, though, I jumped as I heard a high-pitched cracking sound.

Even as he held it in his hand, the Wayfinder had split in half for no apparent reason. Have you ever taken a glass bowl that was full of something really hot moments before and run a bunch of cold water over it in the sink, thinking to wash it out, and watched it just… break? Just fall in half? This was just like that, except it was louder. If you’ve never done that, by the way... don’t. It’s a good way to ruin a glass bowl. I stared at it, brow furrowed and eyes wide with shock. _What the fuck...??_

“That’s not supposed to happen, is it?” I asked, completely sincerely. But judging by the look on his face, the answer was absolutely not. He let out a brief bellow, and threw the pieces bodily at the ground. 

“FUCK!” he shouted, purposefully not in my direction, and his fists clenched and unclenched. 

“Holy shit,” I breathed, totally at a loss. “What the fuck do we do now?” He glared at me, the edge of his fury just barely restrained. 

“We find the other one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe the biggest letdown to me of RoS was that there was no scene where Ben got to talk to Vader/Anakin... so this is where i decided to do it my damn self lol. poor baby. but he needed it T-T
> 
> thanks for all your support, hope you enjoy the ways i'm about to deviate from RoS lol :3  
(no spoiler warning bc none of this happened in the movie, btw.)


	54. Chapter 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the mirror turns into a metaphor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's smut in this chapter ayyyy!

Back on the Supremacy, a navigational officer was puzzling over the two halves of the Wayfinder that I, believe it or not, was clever enough to grab before we took off in the Whisper from Mustafar. Kylo was fuming nearby as the young woman looked it over with one of her instruments.

“Can it be reproduced with the markings, then?” he was growling.

“Possibly, but it won’t be readable by the navicomputers,” she replied, and for once a subordinate officer seemed more fascinated by the puzzle in front of her than terrified of Kylo’s rage. “I may have to test it for certain alloys, we might be able to reproduce--”

“Do whatever you must,” he snarled. “Apprentice, come with me.” I raised an eyebrow at him, and as he stomped out of the lab I followed behind. 

“I thought you said we have to find the other one?” I asked, confused. 

“We do,” he said. “But we have no leads at all. If someone can make that one readable first, we’ll have a way to Palpatine.”

“I’m still not very keen on paying that dude a visit, but I see your point. What do we do in the meantime?” I realized, as I asked, that he was leading me into a lift-- the lift to his quarters. 

“I don’t know, but right now I’m exhausted,” he said plainly, rubbing his forehead. “Everything you did down there was spectacular, Aeon.” Now I looked at him, feeling a little pang of pride at his words.

“I really did okay, didn’t I?” I asked, smiling. It was rhetorical, but it brought another one of those rare and beautiful smiles to his face.

“You did something I’ve never seen-- never even _ heard _ of-- before, little one.” He leaned over to me, and lifted my chin up towards him. My heart fluttered, even as I felt my connection to him start to fade. “How lucky it was me who got to see it.” 

“Rest well, Master Ren,” I said softly, doing that thing where I used his superior title in a way that didn’t place him above me at all, inverting how he did the same with my diminutives. He smiled, sweet and weary, and I leaned in to wrap my arms around him and nuzzle my head into his chest. When his arms did the same, and his cheek rested against my head, I sighed. For a moment, we were quiet as the lift hummed.

“Aeon?” came a voice, but it wasn’t Kylo’s voice.

“Matt?” I asked, pulling back and looking up at him. All the creases in his face had fallen away, his shoulders slouched, his eyes gone all relaxed and artless.

“Hey!” he said excitedly, and took my face in his hands before leaning down to kiss my forehead. “Oh boy, I sure have felt some stuff since the last time I was up front I wanna ask you about. I feel like the Force was actually _ calling _ me, for the first time in a long time. What happened?” I smiled hugely, full of excitement that Matt might have felt even a little bit of what I’d been feeling lately. Suddenly the lift stopped, and opened into the barren hallway that lead to his room. 

“_So _ much happened. I’ll tell you all about it.” I led him by the hand towards his own door. 

\-----

In the bathroom of the Supremely Big Suite, I was helping Matt put the blonde rinse in his hair. It really wasn’t a convoluted process or anything, like nowhere near as ridiculous as trying to bleach your hair, but it was fun to be with him while he went through the ritual of being himself. Now I was rubbing his head with a towel while he sat on the lip of the tub, massaging his scalp really well. His eyes were closed and a little smile was on his face, which I was watching constantly, enamored.

“So yeah, it was… a lot,” I said, having just wrapped up the rundown of what happened when the Wayfinder was located. One eye cracked open to peek at me.

“You seriously just did something _ incredible _ and you’re just gonna say it was ‘a lot’, hun? It’s fucking amazing!”

“Listen,” I muttered, blushing. “I wasn’t _ trying _ to do anything fancy. I just… knew how to do it. And knew I could, and I guess I wanted to. To help him, and Kylo too.”

“Vader… was my grandfather too,” he said quietly, shutting his eyes again and slouching a little more. “And Ben’s.” My hands stilled, and I felt kinda guilty.

“I’m sorry. I feel like I wasn’t thinking of that, just now.”

“No, it’s okay,” he assured me. “I’m just sure that was one of the times the Force called out to me. But it wasn’t the same as what I feel when you’re in trouble.” 

“What was it?” I asked curiously, pushing the mostly-dry hair out of his face. Now, his sweet brown eyes opened and he looked at me with a suddenly serious expression.

“It was just asking me to help. To help him… let go.”

“Vader?”

“Yeah. I knew it was him. I didn’t really know what was happening, it was like it jerked me awake, or something. I remember knowing you were there, and the whole thing was because of you.” His hand came up to wrap around mine where it touched the towel. “It felt… it felt like I was letting go of something, too. Kylo must’ve been so overwhelmed.”

“He was.” I felt my heart swell up, remembering his face, weeping and begging for some relief that he never quite got. “Anakin said ‘don’t cling to your pain as I did.’ He built that fortress on the same place his master cut him down. I think that’s where Kylo is, his version of Mustafar, on this ship.”

“I think you’re right,” the blonde said. “And me and Ben are stuck here with him.” _ Shit. _

“I’m tryna give him what I can, Matt.” I shook my head, feeling heavy as I wondered how Kylo would deal with what had just happened. It felt like astronomical progress, and then he fuckin’ came home and was right back on his Palpatine shit and _ maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but ugh. _ “I can’t fix anything, but fuck. I just… I dunno how miserable you are. Or Ben is. You put on a smiling face every time I see you, but Kylo is suffering all the time and it’s so obvious. I hope I can give him something that he could use to heal. I hope if he does, it’ll heal all of you.” A little corner of a smile touched his mouth.

“You love him, don’t you?” he asked, and my heart jumped up into my throat. I stared at him, feeling my fear that this would somehow be a bad thing burning on my face. But I nodded slowly, since there was no way I was gonna lie about it.

“I do.” Matt was smiling even more now, which was comforting.

“I know. I can tell.”

“Is it that obvious?” I muttered, glancing away from him. 

“Maybe not to everyone else,” he giggled.

“I love you, too,” I pointed out.

“I know! You told me already!” Now he was grinning. “I’m sure your love for Ben is different, obviously, but I know you love him, too. That’s what’s so magical about you, Aeon. You see us all and you love us all in different ways, too.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “I feel like maybe I should’ve brought my whole thing with him up earlier. Don’t laugh at me, but I was afraid you might… I dunno. Be jealous, or something.”

“Of Kylo? No way,” he said. “He told me about it anyway, about you two. When it happened. I was never jealous. It would be different if I felt like you really thought we were the same person, like you didn’t know and care about me specifically. He’s so different than me. I’m surprised you can connect so much with both of us, and impressed actually. Most people get scared of the other alters, rather than connecting to them. That’s _ why _ it’s so magical. And Ben, he just looks up to you, and I hope you can be closer friends someday because he deserves to be seen for who he is, too.” He was smiling so pleasantly and sweetly, I was starting to buckle under the genuinely kind and affirming things he was saying. I’d just assumed Kylo’s lack of jealousy was shared, which I think was just to push that fear it wasn’t out of my mind. “Besides, trying to be there for you has brought us together more than anything else ever has. We haven’t been ignoring each other for ages now.”

“Really?” I brightened. “That sounds nice, to not just be ignoring your own headmates. It’s not like you can leave, after all.”

“Right?” He seemed pleased, joyful in that way only Matt could be. I felt my heart puff up again, this time with my genuine adoration for him. _ He’s so fucking cute and good. _

“You’re okay, right, Matt?” I asked. “I mean… he _ was _ your grandfather. I know you didn’t wanna be like him or anything, but still.”

“I…” He seemed to be thinking, but shook his head. “I mean. I was afraid of that part of my heritage. But I felt afraid of everything for a long time, so I made it my job to take care of us. Kylo’s job was to protect us, and he got all invested in emulating Vader, not me. I feel better knowing he’s more at peace somehow, though.” I stroked his cheek.

“Me too.” I let my hand trail down onto his bare chest, where we’d taken off his shirt to put the rinse in his hair. The shape of it was so statuesque, even though he was slouching and soft in his demeanor. “Something else happened,” I added quietly. I hadn’t talked to him about the strange, wonderful, overwhelming emotion that had descended after that fucking wild sex I’d had in this very bathroom with Kylo. Something about it had been so profound and so intimate that I was feeling almost at a loss, and sad that I didn’t know if Matt and I could share the same thing or not. _ Or was it bigger than just that moment? _

“What’s that?” he asked, canting his head in his precious way.

“Right before the Wayfinder was located, I felt… I dunno how to describe it. It was like I opened up somehow, like I could feel… everything.” I halted, seeking words that might make sense of it. “Kylo was there. He said he felt it, too.”

“That must be the other time I felt the Force call to me,” he murmured thoughtfully. I looked at his face, full of a sudden hope.

“Kylo said it was me being what I am,” I said, knowing those were Matt’s words in the first place, the first time I’d ever heard them. Another smile spread over Matt’s face, this one revelatory.

“You belong here, Aeon. That doesn’t mean you don’t belong somewhere else also, but this is your story, too.” I stared at him.

“That… that’s exactly what I said after it happened. That this was my story, too. And I wasn’t afraid of it anymore.” He put his hands around my waist suddenly, and pulled me close to him. I let myself land gently on his lap, smiling. 

“I always knew you were special,” he said, running his nose over my cheek.

“Oh yeah? How’d you know that?” I chuckled.

“Just a feeling.” When he said that, I remembered suddenly what Luke had said about him not connecting to the Force out of his fear. He’d been tied into it still, obviously, but had so rarely used it. _Did it tell him about me the way it told Kylo?_

“You’re more special than you know, Matt,” I told him gently. “I remember that one time we were using the Force in my room. When I was all goofy on the candy you gave me. I connect with Kylo like that all the time, and I could connect with you, too.” He pulled his face away from me, his expression falling.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he murmured. “I don’t use the Force much.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m bad at it.”

“You have to be bad at everything, at first,” I pointed out. I felt him start to get anxious, to withdraw even as he still held me.

“Not like this.” His hands started to shake as they held me. _ Oh no, maybe this isn’t a good way to bring this up. Shit! _

“Hey, it’s okay,” I cooed, sitting up and stroking his cheek. “We don’t have to talk about it, okay?” His big, sad eyes found me.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Aeon. By making a terrible mistake.”

“Beautiful heart, even if you did, I’d be alright.”

“No,” he said pointedly, shaking his head. “No, you wouldn’t.” His fear was starting to freak me out a little bit. _What did he do that was so bad, anyway? _ _ Damn, the ONE person whose backstory I don’t already know!_

“Okay,” I said, making my voice as neutral as possible. “I trust you. If you don’t wanna go there, we don’t have to.”

“I…” He looked anxious, but this was a slightly different anxiety. Instead of shaking, his hands now gripped me as though he was afraid to let me go. “I wish I could connect with you like that, Aeon. I felt it, like it was tugging on me. But it was far away, and I don’t know if I can get closer.” He seemed defeated, head sagging.

“One day maybe I can guide you there,” I whispered, leaning against him and rubbing his shoulder to try and soothe him. “Or hey-- this sounds crazy, I know, but maybe Kylo can help. If you ever wanted to try.”

“Kylo won’t help me,” he replied, sighing. “He resents that I won’t use it. I know he does.”

“He’s growing. Maybe he’ll change. He helped me.”

“Yeah but you _ wanted _ to use it.”

“Not all the time, I didn’t, “ I grumbled, rolling my eyes. I had more than one shitty memory of trying to learn the Force with Kylo, after all. “But I think it’s more about seeing what’s inside you that’s the only thing in your way.”

“Maybe,” he murmured, still sounding uncertain. “You make me wish so much.”

“Don’t do it just for me. Do it if you really want to.” I ran my hand down his arm to one of his hands on my waist, tugging it gently up to my face so I could place a kiss on the ends of his fingers. “You deserve every good thing, Matt.” He started to run his fingers over my lips delicately, and turned his head to look down at my face.

“Does Kylo know how sweet you are?” he asked, giving a little smile. His eyes were heavy, watching my mouth.

“Is that a double entendre?” I asked, playfully raising an eyebrow and suppressing a giggle. He looked slightly surprised, or maybe distracted?

“It wasn’t _ supposed _ to be...” he mumbled. I could feel his chest start to move a little more, his breaths starting to get heavier. _ I think I just reminded him of something, didn’t I? _

“He knows I’m sweet to you, though I doubt he knows just how sweet.” I ran my hand over one of his pectoral muscles and watched his face as I rubbed a circle over a nipple. “I don’t give him the details, and thankfully he never asks. He says you deserve it, though.”

“Does he?” Matt looked like he was a little dazed, between my activating his nervous system and learning that Kylo had said a nice thing about him. His fingers were still tracing around my bottom lip and chin. “That’s…”

“I agree with him, of course,” I murmured, smirking a little. It was so much fun to turn him on. I reached up and pulled his chin down towards me, pulling his bottom lip down with my finger a little. His hand fell to my neck where he touched the skin there like it was some extremely rare fabric, or super soft leather. Those touches always sent a shiver down my spine, and this time was no exception. 

Gently I edged my finger into his mouth, and when he closed his eyes and opened a little wider to hungrily accept it, heat flared in my abdomen. Slowly he ran his tongue around it, soft and warm and wet. Now I was breathing heavier, watching his beautiful lips pucker so lewdly. His eyes drifted open, and for a second he looked almost embarrassed. As soon as I pushed another digit in, though, he shivered and suckled it, too. I pushed them back deeper into his throat a little, experimentally. I trusted him by this point to retract if he was uncomfortable. To my amazement, though, I was in past the knuckle and he seemed unfazed-- more enthusiastic, even, running his tongue between them and opening his mouth wider. My mouth fell open.

“Fuck,” I breathed. “I’ve turned you into a bit of a slut, haven’t I?” It was half a joke, but the coy look he gave me rendered it not even kind of a joke. His hand was tugging the zipper of the vest I was wearing down, revealing my skin to the slight chill of the air. I started to pull my fingers out of his mouth only to push them back in. He groaned in response to that suggestive motion, and one of his hands slipped under my vest to rub a nipple. I sucked in a breath, and between that and his tongue, I was getting wet extremely quickly.

“Mm,” he hummed around my fingers, and then slid his head back to slip them out. “Let me get you out of this.” Of course I immediately moved my arms so he could pull the vest off properly. His hands went immediately, even urgently to my waistband. “And this.” 

“Are you excited today?” I grinned at him, standing up off his lap as he tugged on my pants. They weren’t halfway down my legs before he took my hips and turned me facing away from him, fingers kneading the place where my ass met my thighs. 

“I wanna try something new,” he murmured as he leaned forward to kiss one cheek, which made me giggle involuntarily. “Can I?”

“What is it?” I asked him, curious and fairly certain that whatever it was, I’d be on board. In reply he gently tugged me a step back towards him and put one knee on either side of me, sliding closer to the lip of the tub. His hands clamped around my thighs just under my butt, thumbs pushing apart the cheeks a little. 

I waited for him to say something, but instead his tongue landed on my asshole._ Oh! That! _ I gasped as my nerves responded immediately, bending just a little forward with my hands on my knees to give him better access. It had been a while since someone paid attention to that particular erogenous zone. But it felt even better than I remembered, sending shivers all through me. He pressed his face in a little harder, nose buried between my cheeks, tongue pushing at the puckered opening beneath it.

“Oh, _ yes,_” I moaned, and my enthusiasm seemed to egg him on as he spread my ass a little wider with his enormous hands. He was taking his time again, figuring it out, listening to the sounds of my enjoyment. When he slid a finger inside my cunt without prompting, my eyes fluttered. “Fuck! God, Matt, you really have been-- shit!-- watching porn on the cortex!”

He made no reply except to slide another finger inside since I was already dripping; the electrifying movements of his tongue increased their pace and pressure. I felt my legs start to shake under me. Slowly he was easing me open while he worked my g-spot, the very tip of his tongue slipping inside my ass and rattling even more of the nerve endings there. I groaned, feeling my heart beating in my clit as I wound up tighter and tighter. His mouth pulled away suddenly.

“Do you like things inside, too?” he asked. _ God I fucking love him, I love how sweet he is, I love hearing how excited his voice is every time he asks me something like that. _

“In my ass? Absolutely. Just… take it slow, right now,” I replied, exhilarated.

“Hang on,” he murmured, and withdrew his fingers to slide my pants the rest of the way down. He stood up behind me and wrapped his hands around my waist, maneuvering us away from the tub. I assumed we were going to be bed, of course, so when he pressed me up against the sink and bent me over onto it, I felt an impossibly profound thrill of arousal. _ Okay!! Assertive today, isn’t he? _

“Shit!” I swore, feeling my inner thighs clench as he spat onto his finger and swirled it around my asshole. 

“Tell me if it’s too much?” he asked. I looked up to see myself bent over the sink in the mirror, his gorgeous form behind me with one hand on my back and the other vanishing behind me. _ Holy fucking shit. _ I just nodded, breathless with anticipation. He pushed inside me with patient relish, staring down at his work with his mouth slightly open.

“Ohhhhmigod,” I squeaked, reminded very suddenly how _ good _ this felt. I watched his arm start to work in the mirror, gently fucking me with his finger, and my eyelids fluttered as the sensations of it blossomed out all over my body. He was panting, his body starting to flush; I felt his cock pushing against my hip through his trousers.

“Maker,” he breathed. “You’re so fucking _ hot_, Aeon.” But the evidence of his arousal suddenly had me imagining his cock inside me while he did this, and I groaned pitifully.

“Matt, will you fuck me, pleeease?” He looked up at me, and then seemed to realize that he could see us reflected in the mirror, too, because his eyes widened as they met mine through our reflections.

“While I--?”

“Yes _ please_.” His stare flared up suddenly.

“Fuck,” he swore, and immediately went to tug his pants down with his free hand. The other continued to work my ass. I watched his cock spring up when it was freed, beautiful and urgent, and felt myself tighten. He stroked himself for a moment, which was unbelievably hot to watch, and then guided himself to my entrance with much more luck than he’d had the last time. I blame the view. 

He growled as he pushed into me, his finger stalling for a moment as all his attention went elsewhere. I saw his eyelids flutter, his massive shoulders tense up. Then his hand landed on one of my ass cheeks and held me steady while he slowly drew himself out again. I bit my lip as I watched him fuck me, logging the mirror thing in my head for later. When his darkened eyes looked up at our reflection and met mine, my legs started to shake again.

“Jesus fuck,” I whimpered. He stood a little straighter, so attractive I thought I might faint, and then he seemed to find his rhythm as his hips thrust into me and his finger resumed its movement too. Now my eyes rolled a little, fuller than I remembered possible as he started to pick up speed.

“Fuck I love watching you,” he said hoarsely.

“Y-you-- oh _ fuck_,” I stammered, totally unable to look away from his reflection. The sight made me feel weak as I got tighter and tighter, body crackling as he continued to rut. His pace was steady, not rushed, and I could feel every inch of his cock and finger as they slid in and out.

“Is it good?” he asked, and I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t asking because he needed reassurance, this time. 

“It’s amazing,” I mewled. “Oh Matt, it f-feels _ so _ good!” The edge was closing in, my vision starting to blur even as I stared in the mirror.

“You gonna cum for me?” he asked, nostrils flaring.

“Yes! Please-- don’t stop!”

“You’re so fucking-- ahh-- _ beautiful _ when you cum, Aeon,” he crooned, pace starting to increase. I felt my heart melt down into the soup with my clenching pelvic floor muscles, always startled and entranced when he was achingly sweet and mind-blowingly hot at the same time. My lower lip started to tremble, the edge rising up sudden and strong.

“M-Matt--”

Stars exploded behind my eyes, mouth hanging open as I clamped down around him and a wave of pleasure crashed into me. I cried out, clinging to the edge of the sink for dear life while I shook under my orgasm. I felt his hips break into a much more urgent speed, withdrawing his finger as he grabbed my hips and let out shuddering breaths.

“Shit! You-- you’re _ perfect--_” And then I felt the warmth of his release as he bent over me and groaned, pace stuttering. His nose and forehead landed on my back and I felt him gasping against my skin, still holding me in place. Sucking in air, I sagged against my ceramic support.

“Oh, God,” I whispered to nobody in particular, overcome with just how much the mirror had kick-started my arousal._ Fuck I gotta do that again. A lot. _Matt’s arms came around my waist and towed me upright, leaning me back against his unbelievable body. 

Through bleary eyes I looked at our reflection again as he held me there, watching his huge hands grip my hip and my ribs, his head bend down to nuzzle my ear. It was the first time I’d looked-- really _ looked-- _ into a mirror since I’d arrived on the ship. My body was a little more muscled than I remembered, probably thanks to all the training, though next to Matt’s it looked very soft. Most peoples’ would, though. I watched his eyes swim up to look at the same thing I was looking at. I still felt the strange sense of my body being not quite right, still wanted to cover my chest instinctively. But when he saw me, his enormous hands started to move, to run over my skin like he couldn’t get enough of how it felt. Watching those hands made me weak at the knees. 

“Maker, look at you,” he murmured softly, lips pressed into the top of my ear. I watched myself turn pink in the mirror, now fully aware of how obvious my blushing always was.

“Do I have to?” I joked very quietly, looking away.

“I’ll do it for you.” He was joking too, but only barely. His tone was husky, serious. “But don’t you think you look like you belong here with us?” 

My heart skipped several beats. My eyes darted back to the mirror, to how I nestled into his massive arms and chest. I reached my hand up to his cheek, watching my figure shift, his nose sliding through the fuzz on my head as his eyes danced over us. I felt that feeling, that strange and inexplicable immensity, but this time it was gentle as it wrapped around us and settled in. Tears pricked my eyes. 

“Hey,” Matt said gently, bending down and reaching up to turn my face towards his. “You okay?” I looked into his brown eyes, so full of concern and interest and love.

“Yeah,” I breathed, nodding even as I started to cry. I shut my eyes, and he turned me around and wrapped me up tight in his arms.

“Shhh. It’s okay. You’re okay.” He stroked the back of my head. “You wanna take a quick shower and go curl up with me?” 

“Yes,” I burbled into his chest. 

“Okay,” he cooed, and led me over to the shower. I was quiet while we washed off, my hands trailing over his body as much as his did over mine. I tried to feel everything that was happening right now, every touch or step or drop of water. We toweled off and retreated to the bed, shoring up under the blankets. Matt laid a series of gentle kisses on my back as we laid there. My head was spinning.

“I love you so much,” I murmured finally. “I only have two other friends, here. I’m afraid of what’s about to happen.”

“You don’t have to decide anything right now,” he reassured me. “And even if you do, you can change your mind. Kylo’s right. His orders couldn’t keep you here, not if you really wanted to go.” 

“I shoulda given him more lip for that.” I heard him chuckle against my shoulder before he scooted up and folded me into his chest. “I haven’t told him.”

“That you love him?”

“No. I haven’t even told him I fell for you, either. We’ve had all this other shit to deal with.”

“Oh, give it time. It’ll slip out when you don’t mean for it to, right?” he teased me.

“Wow. Be nice to me.”

“You can’t hush the truth, Aeon.”

“Why are you like this?” I asked, grinning uncontrollably as I pretended to be exasperated. Mostly pretended, anyway.

“You love it.”

“I really do.”

“I love you back,” he sighed. I found one of his big hands and held it in both of mine.

“Shit’s about to get real, Matt. It might get real for you, too.”

“Yeah… probably.” He sounded like he wasn’t looking forward to it. “But you’re here, and that makes me feel better.” I smiled.

“I said if I could ever help you, I would. I meant it.”

“I know.” His lips pressed into my head. “I trust you.” I sighed, eyes wandering out to the dimmed window where the _ Supremacy _ was orbiting a rocky little moon. These moments, in bed with Matt, kept me so grounded. Just like catching up with Mitaka, or Lucky’s extremely professional check-ins which left no stone unturned. Even Kylo, for whom I was absolutely brimming with torrential emotions because of just how similar we actually were, was starting to make me feel safe and valued and understood. I wondered if I would meet anyone else who could be someone I might, eventually, befriend. _ Could I belong here? Really? _My eyes landed on the guitar that was leaned up in the corner of the room, and my heart ached.

Looking back out the window, I watched the stars spin almost imperceptibly until I fell asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, Matt in that mirror makes me all wobbly just thinking about it... *sigh*
> 
> wanted a sweet, hot scene with Matt before any more Plot, tbh. i hope y'all enjoy the lil reprieve ;)
> 
> you are THE BEST readers and i LOVE your comments. i'm just saying. thank you so much!!!


	55. Chapter 55

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Luke says the thing.

I knew I was in another Force dream, or whatever you'd call them, when I opened my eyes and I was once again on Ahch-To. Below me the sea was crashing into a cove, and the rain was gentle and misty on my skin. I turned my head to see Luke sitting by me on a rock, looking somber.

"Hey, kid," he said.

"Hey Uncle Luke," I replied. He side-eyed me.

"I'm your uncle now? When's the wedding?" I blushed a little at my slip, and frowned at him.

"Maybe I'm just grateful for your not-quite-paternal guidance."

"Sure." His face was smug, but I wasn't sure it was entirely disapproving. "You have some explaining to do, kid. That stunt you pulled on Mustafar--"

"Hey, I was just--"

"--was amazing." He grinned at me. "How the hell did you do that?" _ Oh, well. Okay then. _

"You're asking me how the Force works now?" But I was smiling too, awash in his praise.

"No, I'm asking you how_ you _ worked it," he said pointedly. "How did you get it to show him that?"

"I think it was what Anakin wanted to show him," I replied quietly. I hadn't really thought about it, but as soon as he asked, the answer seemed clear. 

"And you just facilitated it?" 

"I don't think it could’ve happened if we both hadn't been there, or we hadn't been at that place. It called me, because I was open to listening.”

“Didn’t you think it might be the dark side trying to fuck with you?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally thought that mighta been it.” He furrowed his brow at me.

“And you went in anyway?”

“Didn’t you do the same thing, once?” I pointed out. He narrowed his eyes, but I saw the little grin at the corner of his mouth.

“Fair enough. Either way, something changed after that.”

“I know,” I murmured. “I don’t know exactly what, yet. But Kylo’s been a little distracted by the damn Wayfinder.” I was kinda over that whole thing. _ Like, really? He’s just gonna walk into the Emperor’s lair like that? No way that ends well. _

“Oh yeah, that. That was pretty funny, when you broke it,” he chuckled. 

“I didn’t break it!” I exclaimed, indignant.

“I know, it was an accident. I think it broke because of the rest of the fortress breaking. Maybe the Force saw it as just as much a part of what Vader needed to be rid of as everything else. Either that, or my father’s up to some mischief.” He seemed honestly pleased by this development. I crossed my arms.

“Well, now we’re supposed to go looking for the other one.”

“I know. That’s partly why I brought you here.” I raised an eyebrow.

“Do tell.”

“I know where it is. Or, well, where the map to find it is.”

“What is it with this place and maps to shit?” I grumbled. “Never know where the thing is, just gotta find the goddamn map. I almost don’t wanna know, to be honest.”

“Yeah, but you gotta. Rey’s on the way to finding it, and if she gets to Exegol by herself this whole thing’s gonna go up in flames,” he told me. I rubbed my forehead.

“I get to meet her now, huh? Great.”

“She’s not half bad, yanno.” He grinned.

“I’m sure she’s not. I just… things are weird enough as it is.” I looked at him, feeling like I had half a million questions I knew he wouldn’t really answer. The last and least of which was how to get to Emperor Dickhead’s dark abode, and of course that was probably the only one he’d answer. But there was one that was lingering on my mind. “I feel like I need to ask you about Matt, first. After Mustafar, he said he felt the Force calling him for the first time in a long time. He… I tried to ask him about using it more. With me. He panicked, and made it sound like he did something really bad. Do you know what it was?”

I didn’t much like the look on his face when I asked that. He looked at the ground, uncertain.

“I don’t wanna tell you anything you aren’t ready to hear, Aeon,” he said finally. _ Wow, that’s not better. _

“Don’t patronize me, dude. I get bad news when I’m not ready for it all the time, I’ll deal.” My heart was pounding in my throat, but I meant it. Whatever it was, I’d accepted Kylo’s bullshit so far and I was equipped to do the same for Matt. Luke took a deep breath.

“It wasn’t Kylo who burned the Jedi academy down that night, or murdered my students. It was Mattau.” 

For a minute, I just blinked as the meaning of those words assembled itself in slow motion in my brain. There was a long silence as I looked away from the old Jedi, out to the sea which vanished into a foggy, indistinct horizon. Everything seemed to stand still, and fall utterly quiet. 

“Well, fuck,” I said finally, completely uncertain how to process this news.

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t surprise me to hear he’s been scared of using the Force ever since then, or that Kylo took the reigns. I always figured it was just blind rage, the kind that most really nice people are just sitting on until it explodes.”

“Jesus,” I breathed. I guess I always knew it was a matter of time until Matt fell off his pedestal. But this was a level of shock I hadn’t expected. 

“I know you and he got close. I really didn’t wanna disrupt that,” Luke muttered. 

“It… it’s okay. I’d rather I knew.”

“I really hope this doesn’t cause problems for you.” I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

“I think it’s okay. Really. I mean, I kinda relate.”

“Really?” Luke asked, and now he looked a little worried. 

“It’s nothing that dramatic,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But… I’m used to feeling like my anger doesn’t accomplish anything. When I gave up on actually seeming as angry as I was, the same thing would happen to me. I’d be fine until one day I just… wasn’t. There were usually pretty shitty consequences.” _ More than one trip to the hospital, more than one broken friendship or lost job or car accident. _

“Well,” he sighed. “If you woke up to your teacher standing over you with a lightsaber, I guess that’s a reasonable trigger for a lot of shit. Maybe not mass murder, but.”

“We both know it was Snoke’s influence that pushed him, just like it pushed Kylo,” I pointed out. But, thinking about that moment was strange, for me. It always felt like flimsy writing, that bit of Luke’s story. I glanced sidelong at him. “Why’d you do it?” For a moment, he was silent, staring at his hands.

“Fear can let the darkness in, as I’m sure you know,” he began. “It offers an easy way out, never telling you that it’s sending you in circles. I’d been watching him so close for so long. I saw more and more of Kylo. I saw more and more of his power. In a moment where my fear escalated, I saw a vision of him. A great warlord, consumed by hate. Just like my father.” His shoulders sagged, grief in his voice. “I was so afraid that, for a moment, the darkness called to me. The easy way out would be to kill him, and make sure what I saw never came to be. In my weakness, I really thought about it.” Now he reached up to rub his forehead wearily. “Of course, that was the moment I assured it would happen.” 

“I’m sorry, Luke,” I said, and it felt like such a limp response. But I mean, it was real. I _ was _ sorry. 

“I failed him. I failed Leia and Han. I failed my students, my teachers before me. Now, I wish I hadn’t been so miserable. I wish I’d tried harder to reach him, after that.”

“Depression and hopelessness can take you pretty far away from yourself,” I told him gently. “And you were up against an enemy you had no idea was even there. I know that feeling, for sure. You’d think by the fifth time I dropped outta college because my symptoms were running me into the ground, I woulda thought, something else is happening here. I’m tough, I’m smart, I’m driven. Why can’t I hang with this? But I just thought I was a failure, that I wasn’t actually any of those things. I was a fuckup and I didn’t even know why.” I sighed, and his eyes rose up to meet mine once more. He looked surprised.

“Damn. I’m glad I picked you for this, yanno that?” he said, giving me half a wry smile. I returned it. “You really got a way with making people not feel alone.”

“Thanks,” I murmured. My heart puffed up a little, genuinely touched that he’d say something like that. I hoped it would be enough to help Kylo and Matt, and maybe even Ben, not that I knew anything about what was going on in Ben’s mind yet. 

“By the way, the map is a knife. It has an inscription on it that tells where the other Wayfinder is. It’s on Pasaana, and you’d better hurry because Rey and her friends are already on the way there.”

“Oh yeah, that,” I groaned. “Thank you. I’ll get us on the road as soon as you let me wake up.” I threw him a little teasing smirk, but he just smiled all sagely and reached out a hand towards me. 

“May the Force be with you, always,” he said, and as his hand laid on my shoulder, I jerked awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o__o
> 
> I TOLD YOU IT WAS ABOUT TO GET INTERESTING


	56. Chapter 56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren is kinda a punk bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RoS spoilers in this one, f'sho.

“Apparently they’ve taken the Wookie into custody, sir,” said one of the generals who was on the bridge of the Supremacy the next morning. Kylo was standing on the command deck, full of restless energy. I watched him from closer to the entrance where Mitaka’s station was, and he was listening intently along with me. 

“How long until we reach Pasaana?” Kylo demanded. 

“Thirty minutes,” came the navigation officer’s reply. 

“That’s too long,” Kylo growled. “I’ll take the Whisper to the surface. She can’t get that knife before we do.” I felt myself tense with frustration. I’d told Kylo immediately when I woke up that I’d had a dream about where the knife was (I left Luke out of it, of course) and he’d gone right into business mode. Not that I expected morning cuddles when we were supposed to be dealing with this drama, or anything. Just that he was full of chaotic, jagged energy that I knew was more related to Rey than anything else. I didn’t know why, of course, other than his crush which may or may not have still been intact. Unless he was still caught up in the idea that she was a symbol of his failure, which seemed en theme at that point. Still, it made me uneasy. 

“It should be prepped for flight now, sir,” someone else said. There were a fuck ton of people on that bridge.

“Good. I’m departing immediately.” He turned on his heel and made towards the exit, and towards me. “Apprentice, I want you to stay here.”

“What?” I asked, feeling myself flush instantly with rage. “Why?”

“You’re in command of this ship until I return. I shouldn’t be gone long,” he growled. His stare was pointed, and for the first time in a long time I knew he was using his rank with me. _ Seriously? _

“It’s her, isn’t it?” I retorted in a low, venomous voice. Now his eyes flashed, and I saw a familiar anger there. 

“That’s an order,” he snarled, and marched off without another word. I stood there with my fists clenched and fumed. _ Are you FUCKING kidding me right now? The one thing he doesn’t talk about, the one thing I guess I’ve been too chicken shit to ask about. _ My mind vibrated with the conflict of knowing that this was Kylo’s way of hiding something he was afraid or ashamed of, and the intense insecurity I felt around Rey. Not only was she a prior contender for Kylo’s interest AND his apprenticeship, but she was also another powerful Force user who I knew played a huge role in the endgame of this motherfucking redemption arc I had just been feeling so good about. And I had no fucking clue what role that was. 

“What are your orders, Imminent Apprentice?” came Mitaka’s voice from beside and below me where he sat at his station. He looked up from beneath his hat, face full of knowing concern. In the back of my head, I was sorry that he was now on the receiving end of one of my apparently ‘spooky’ expressions. 

“Stay the course to Pasaana,” I replied. “Any new information you’d report to Kylo, report it to me.” I was surprised at the steel in my own voice. I almost sounded like I knew how to give orders. “Lieutenant, walk with me for a moment.” I added to Mitaka, who simply nodded and shuffled out of his station. I huffed my way off the bridge, through the sliding doors and into the hallway with the little man’s footsteps behind me. I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I needed to ground myself. 

“You alright, ducky?” came his voice, and I stopped.

“No,” I growled. “This is bullshit, and he knows it. He’s fucking hung up on her, and I dunno how. We just cut our way through a fucking regiment of cultists, so he’s not doing this for my protection.”

“He’s been obsessed with this girl for some time now, you know. So was Snoke, before him.”

“I know. I’m just-- I dunno exactly why except she’s powerful, she’s with the Resistance, and she has the same goal we do. To find Palpatine.” I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck suddenly, as though mentioning them both in the same sentence had triggered some inexplicable discomfort. 

“Then it seems his urgency is warranted,” Mitaka pointed out.

“It is, it’s just--” I sighed, clenching my fists and unclenching them again. “I’m just mad. I gotta get outta this headspace, Duff. God knows what I’ll do if I’m in command and something shitty happens and I’m feeling like this.” He put a hand on my shoulder gently. 

“I know you feel like you’ve been left here to do nothing. But don’t worry about him. He said he’ll be back soon, and you can talk to him then. Take a deep breath, and just hang in there for a bit.” He smiled at me, a small smile that tried to encourage me without promising anything he couldn’t. I looked at him, and took the breath he advised. 

“Okay. Thank you, Duffy.”

“Anytime, especially on the command deck,” he replied, looking back at me pointedly. 

“Be careful, I might promote you to Official Person Who Keeps My Head On Straight while he’s gone.” I grinned. He rolled his eyes, but was still smiling.

“I do that job for free, ducky. Now, keep that communicator on, in case something important happens.” Throwing me a wink, he turned to walk back to his station. I watched him go, profoundly grateful to have a friend like him. Then I stood listlessly in the hallway for a moment. Strangely, all the hustle and bustle of personnel coming and going seemed to have stalled, and it was quiet for a moment. 

_ Aeon, _ came a faint suggestion of a whisper behind me. I turned, brow furrowing. Down at the end of one of the hallways, a dark-haired boy was leaning around the corner of the wall and looking at me with big, anxious eyes. 

“Ben?” _ Does he look… older? Than the last time I saw him? _ He waved his hand at me, and motioned me to follow him. I glanced around before I shuffled towards him, and as soon as I was close he took off down that hallway. “Ben, where are we going?” I called, but he just looked back at me and waved again. So I followed, until we were in a familiar lift. It was the one that went all the way up to the Supreme Leader’s suite.

He was silent as it hummed, and he looked nervous. His hair was short but shaggy, and he did look older; maybe 11 or so, rather than about 7 like he’d seemed before. But, since Kylo wasn’t on the ship, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Like, was this just my head doing its crazy thing, or was Ben actually trying to show me something through the Force?

Before I could ask, the lift opened and he ran off down the hall. When I arrived at the suite the door opened, and he led me back into the bedroom to the closet. I turned the light on, and for the first time I realized that there was another door in the back of it. Ben was gone. _ Oh, shit. _

A little nervously, I pushed the console button that opened the door. The white light that greeted me was almost blinding at first, but I blinked it away and saw a little corridor with stairs that rounded a corner. _ Oh, a hidden room. That’s not ominous at all. _ I stepped into it, wondering what would be revealed. 

The hallway opened down into a surprisingly large chamber, all white and clean. Along the wall were shelves that held a few strange objects, and drawers underneath them. It was like I’d stumbled into some kind of chamber of secrets, and I felt a pang of guilt at how instantly my curiosity was spiked. _ Then again, Ben led me here, didn’t he? _ There must’ve been something there he wanted me to see. Some of the things on the shelves were totally random to me-- a belt of some kind, a ring with a dark crystal in it, an ornately carved wooden box, its lid open and nothing inside. I gently opened a drawer that was nearby, but it was empty too. So I opened the next one. Inside it were a pair of gold dice on a chain. I felt something painful in my chest as I remembered that they had belonged to Han Solo. Kylo had picked them up on Craite at the end of _ Episode VIII, _ and apparently he’d kept them. For himself, for Matt, or for Ben, I didn’t know. I reached inside to touch them gently, as if to pay my respects. I shut the drawer and turned to move on, and then I saw it.

Centermost along one wall was a black pedestal that I knew immediately. On it were the crumpled remains of Vader’s helmet. 

“Did they ever even explain how he got this thing?” I murmured to myself. I’d expected it to radiate some kind of dark side energy, but it just sat there like any other inanimate object. The image of the same helmet, but intact on its wearer, swam into my mind. Mustafar had been such a profound experience that I hadn’t really begun to process yet. Reaching out to it, I just barely laid the tips of my fingers on it. 

Because I am literally the luckiest person in the galaxy, of course, the thing crumbled to ashes instantly. My eyes flew wide open in shock.

“Shit! Shit shit shit!” My heart raced as I pulled my hand away. “Fuck, he’s gonna fucking kill me,” I muttered, rubbing my head with both hands and grimacing. I took a few deep breaths, trying to remain calm. _ Oh well, it’s not like you’re gonna lie to him about it if he asks. _ Who knows, maybe he won’t be mad? That seemed like wishful thinking, but I decided to hold onto it just to make myself feel better. 

I heard a gentle little sound, and turned to see another drawer slipping back into its place in the wall as though it had just been opened and shut again. I glanced around, wondering if Ben was still there, but saw nobody. Tentatively I stepped over and pulled the drawer out.

Inside it was a lightsaber hilt I’d never seen before. Simple and shiny chrome with golden accents, it looked like it hadn’t been used in a very long time because it was so new, much like mine did. I reached down towards it, as if touching things hadn’t proven perilous enough already. But I was compelled, y’all. And as soon as I did, I knew why.

Flashes of memories entered my mind’s eye; a jungle planet, a huge terraced building with huts outside, large boulders and rocks everywhere. Luke, younger than he was now, and a group of kids listening to him. Padiwans. I was seeing the Jedi Academy.

_ This is Matt’s lightsaber. _

“Oh,” I breathed, surprised for the third time in very few minutes. Here it was, still, after all this time. He hadn’t gotten rid of it, but neither had he touched it. I wanted to pull it out, to turn it on, to see its color. But something told me he would know, and then I’d have even more explaining to do than I already did. I retracted my hand, giving it a last look, and slid the drawer shut. 

“Imminent Apprentice,” came a staticky voice over my communicator very suddenly. I took the little tube off my belt where it usually was these days. 

“Yes?” I asked into it. _ This had better be good news. _

“The Supreme Leader is returning on the _ Millennium Falcon _ with the Wookie prisoner. They should be arriving within minutes.”

“I’ll head that way.” I shut off the microphone and headed out of the room, shutting its door behind me before I hurried out of Kylo’s suite and down towards the docking bay. 

Lo and behold, when I got where I was going, there was the fuckin’ _ Millenium Falcon _ in the flesh. Well, in the metal, but whatever. It was surreal to see that iconic ship just sitting there. Kylo was heading towards me, and somewhere in the distance I heard the familiar angry bellow of a Wookie. _ Shit. That’s Chewbacca, I’m 100% sure. _I was faintly grateful that I didn’t have to meet Chewy himself while standing next to the Supreme Leader of the First Order and getting called ‘apprentice.’ 

“I have it,” he announced, fire in his eyes as he approached with a weird little dagger in his hand. “This has the coordinates for the other Wayfinder on it.”

“Uh, good job?” I said, a little confused as to what I was supposed to say exactly, and more than a little in my head because of the sheer amount of information that had just been packed into my unsuspecting brain. To say nothing of my resurfacing frustration with him. “How’d it go?”

“The girl escaped.” He frowned. “So did her friends. I want to find them.”

“Really? Before you find the Wayfinder?” I asked icily, hackles going right up again.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he growled.

“Too fucking bad, Kylo! We are gonna talk about this right fucking now!” I said, eyes flaring at him as I felt myself start to get truly pissed off. “You never talk to me about her, and I wanna know why!”

“Maybe it’s none of your concern,” he snarled, looming closer to me.

“Your concern is my concern, or that’s what I thought anyway.” I crossed my arms. “I thought you trusted me?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you--”

“Then _ what?_” I stared up at him, face burning. He glared back, nostrils flaring. 

“I told you I _ do not want to talk about this right now, _ apprentice,” he said, and started marching away. Fury boiled inside me as he retreated to using our ranks to avoid explaining himself. I spun around and ignited my lightsaber. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“You don’t wanna talk about it? Fucking spar with me about it, asshole,” I challenged. I stared at him through my eyebrows, legs planted apart, already in an active stance. I was gonna get this fucking rage out one way or another. He turned back to me, and I half expected him to try to avoid this, too.

Luckily, he ignited his own weapon immediately. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, these two. always... uh... waffling violently between fluff and anger... and sex...


	57. Chapter 57

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think they call it post-nut clarity...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is DEFINITELY HELLA SMUT in this chapter.

It was a matter of seconds before the two of us were at each other’s throats, sabers humming and whirling incessantly as we duked it out right there in the docking bay in front of God and everybody. I didn’t give a single shit, though, I was so fucking pissed. Apparently he didn’t either. 

The dance we’d done before was nowhere to be felt. Instead we leapt and spun and struck mercilessly at one another, and if I hadn’t been so busy being livid, I might’ve noticed that I was getting really, REALLY good with my lightsaber. Kylo was absolutely not going easy on me, though I think it’s possible that he was trying to avoid actually murdering me, maybe. I didn’t care, I was more invested in the struggle than in the actual resolution of this fight. The resolution I wanted wasn’t gonna happen in the form of a saber-related injury, after all. But goddamn, I needed to be angry, and this was my favorite way to be angry.

We moved all around the bay, circling the Falcon, slashing the wing of an errant TIE fighter. Every trooper, engineer, or pilot in the bay backed very fucking far away, although I think there might’ve been a little crowd of them gathered near the open blast doors. Placing bets on who would win, probably. 

I slashed at him, he bore down on me, I feinted, he blocked. I jumped way higher than I thought I could-- the Force, no doubt-- and for a few minutes we lunged at each other across the top of some nondescript transporter ship. 

“Why don’t you wanna talk about it, Kylo?” I shouted as I struck at him and he blocked me.

“I said it’s not your concern!” he barked back as I parried one of his blows. 

“You scared?” I goaded, knowing exactly what his response would be. His eyes flashed, and he bore down on me with a vicious series of strikes that I fought off one by one before I spun my saber and took a flying leap onto the ground from the top of the transporter. He bellowed and hurtled down after me, and I dodged his red blade before I swung back. “I asked you a question!”

“Be careful, apprentice.” He feinted and I had to turn my entire body around to block his next strike. But I switched hands and nearly caught him off guard, watching him grimace furiously. 

“Or what?” I backed up as he swung at me, realizing that I had come back close to the Falcon. I knocked his next blow away, staring daggers at him. 

“There are punishments for this level of insubordination,” he replied, and I bumped up against one of the levers that was still holding the exit ramp of the ship open. 

“You think I’m afraid of your punishments, Kylo?” I spun around the metal pipe, making an underhand strike that he twisted away from. “You think anything’s gonna stop me from finding out what I wanna know?”

“You’ll learn what I want you to learn when I want you to learn it!” he barked, swinging a high blow down at me that I barely blocked as I backed away from him again and into the Falcon. “And I’m starting to think you could use a lesson!” 

“In being an asshole? I’m good, thanks!” I drew him up into the rounded corridors of that ship, keeping my thrusts narrow and pointed even as he parried them away one by one. 

“Perhaps I should train that filthy mouth of yours into better respect, little one. Isn’t that your favorite lesson?” he said. _Goddammit, every time!_ My pelvic floor muscles tightened. 

“I believe that’s one I taught you, isn’t it?” I retorted, striking at his knees to no avail. We stumbled backwards into the room that housed the little table where Chewy was always playing space-monster-chess. I swung high and from the side, and he caught my blade there with his crossguard and bore down on me with all his strength. I pushed back, glaring at him, daring him to deny that I was right.

“And yet so often you require an aggressive re-education,” he growled. Our blades sputtered where they met, the sparks shining in his eyes. “Or have you forgotten who your master is?” 

“Maybe you should remind me.” That wasn’t supposed to be an invitation, it was supposed to be a suggestion that he stop being a dickhead. I swear!

“I love nothing better than reminding you of that, little one.” His pupils had blown wide open, and his predacious stare was starting to send heat directly between my legs. This was apparently never not gonna be a thing, for us. Suddenly he pushed hard against me, and swung our blades downwards and out of their deadlock. His other hand was quick as it shot up to grab me by the throat. My saber clattered to the floor, its blade vanishing. Straining against his grip, my hands clawed at his glove as I tried to breathe. He pushed me backwards and into one of the walls, then eased the crush on my windpipe. I inhaled desperately, and he pushed his hand up against my jaw and instead squeezed at the blood vessels on either side of my neck. My vision sparkled as he cut off the bloodflow for just a moment, just long enough to make me feel almost high. He leaned his face in close to mine, and I heard his lightsaber turn off. 

“You should write a better lesson, since it doesn’t seem to stick,” I gasped, and he snarled and pushed my jaw even harder.

“I’ll teach you something you’ll never forget, you filthy little thing.” My heart was already beating in my clit, my body vibrating with my anger, defiance, arousal, desire. I heard the exit ramp of the ship start to close. I grabbed onto his powerful arm, trying to do literally anything about his chokehold, but not trying _very_ hard. His thumb ran up and down my neck below my ear. His other hand landed on my crotch, rubbing through the fabric, and I tried to clamp my thighs together. This seemed to irritate him, and he moved me bodily away from the wall and bent me over one of the nearby consoles, holding my neck down from the back, now. 

Without warning, he slapped my ass, and not gently. I squeaked, surprised by the sting of it that ran all along the nerves under my skin. He slapped it again, and again, and once more, and each time I jerked and made a noise. A fifth strike landed harder, more of a thud than a slap, and I groaned and shivered.

“If I didn’t know any better, apprentice,” he cooed dangerously, “I’d say you’re enjoying this.” He did it again, and I couldn’t stop myself from making a hungry little sound. I felt one of his gloved fingers slip under the waistband of my pants, tugging them down over my ass. I braced for the sensation of leather on my already sensitive skin, and when he slapped me again, my legs shook.

“Fuck,” I murmured.

“What was that?” he asked, rubbing his gloved palm over one cheek.

“Nothing,” I hissed back, and for that he slapped me again, harder this time. I squealed, jerking under his iron grip.

“I could’ve sworn”-- _ slap!-- _ “I heard”-- _ slap!-- _ “that filthy”-- _ slap!-- _ “mouth of yours.” I held in every noise that tried to push out of me while he spanked me, but my limbs flailed extra hard to make up for it. I felt a strange sensation, a pressure on my ankles that held them fast to the metal console; a similar feeling descended onto my wrists on the top, and I knew what he was doing. I growled, but said nothing. He tugged my pants down a little farther, and I felt the chill air hit my cunt where it was now exposed. He ran leather over it with indulgent strokes, and I twitched. Suddenly he started to slap me very, very quickly, starting right over the folds that still barely protected my clit and then moving up and back over the skin that had already started to welt. 

“Aaaah fuck!” I cried, unable to contain it this time.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, palming me again. “Let’s see if we can’t put those lovely lips to better use, hm?” He jerked me up by the neck and released the Force’s hold on me, pushing me around and down onto my knees. With the hand that wasn’t holding my head he went to open his trousers, and his cock sprang out very, very close to my face. _ Oh, my God, it’s so fucking pretty. _ He tilted my head back. “Open,” he commanded, and obviously I just glared at him. Shaking his head, he then grabbed my chin with his other hand and dragged it down to open it for me. “You’ll learn,” he growled, and his jaw worked for a moment before he spat into my mouth. I felt my nethers clench up, inexplicably aroused. 

Without much ceremony, he pushed himself in between my lips and began to rut, getting closer and closer to the back of my throat. I unhinged my jaw and let my face go slack, eyes swimming back up to him as he watched me and panted. I sucked in my cheeks and he groaned. 

“Ugh, that’s much better.” He was deep now, and one of his hands was under my jaw where I was sure he could feel himself fucking the back of my throat. I sucked in air between thrusts, eyes stinging with tears. “Your lips look perfect around my cock, little one.” Something about being told nice things when I was getting fucked halfway into the next week really did it for me, even when I was constantly looking for the next opportunity to be a brat. I hummed, and he let out a gruff noise. Suddenly his hips stopped, and he held himself as deep in my throat as he could for just a moment before he pulled out.

“You sure like my filthy mouth now, huh?” I goaded him, smirking, and he pushed two fingers between my teeth and pressed down hard on my tongue. 

“I’m going to teach you how to beg so beautifully,” he purred as he leaned down close to my ear, his breath hot. “First you’re going to beg me to let you cum, and then you’re going to beg me to let you stop.”

_ Holy fucking shit. _My entire body shuddered at the promise of those words. He hauled me up off my knees then, and towed me over to the circular bench seat before he yanked my pants the rest of the way off, then promptly laid me over the round chess table on my back. It was just barely big enough for my head and my ass to both rest on it. Before I could try to wriggle away, the Force clamped back down on my wrists and pinned them to the seats behind me, then held my ankles firmly in the air as he spread my legs to either side of me. His self-satisfied smile as he leaned forward and pulled the zipper down on my vest was infuriating. He took both of my nipples between his fingers and pinched them, and I yelped. Then he gave them each a quick slap, causing me to suck in a breath against the sting.

“Motherfucker,” I hissed at him, glaring.

“Shh,” he hushed me, before leaning backwards and slapping the backs of both my thighs. I jerked and whined. He slapped them again, closer to my cunt this time, and then again, and the last time he was slapping the extremely soft skin to either side of it. A stream of noises that got louder and louder was my response. He massaged those muscles and stared down at me, his eyes ravenous. “Such a pretty little cunt,” he murmured, rubbing his thumbs on either side of my entrance which made my insides start to twist up with want.

“You just gonna look at it all day?” He glanced angrily up at my face at this.

“I’ll do what I want with it, and you’ll be grateful for every second,” he replied, flicking my clit sharply. I squealed. “Won’t you, little one?”

“We’ll see,” I breathed, unwilling to give him even a modicum of positive feedback. He started slapping my bud in a series of quick little movements that I had to gasp for air to deal with as my nerve endings got rapidly keyed up. I cried out as I began to feel the sear of it down to my toes.

“Is this too much for my fierce little apprentice?” He was staring at my face, watching it contort. “Do they want something gentle, nice and easy, on that pretty little cunt?”

“Fuck you,” I spat, writhing as he kept going. My stomach worked, rising and falling to keep me breathing enough to tolerate the sensations.

“I take that as a no, then,” he replied, and his slaps got even sharper. I yowled, and despite the intensity of it I could feel myself starting to tense up, getting closer to the edge. He reached up and flicked one nipple and then the other and my whole body shook. “How much can you tolerate, do you think?”

“Fuck!” I yelped, my sounds all increasing in pitch as I escalated closer and closer. But he knew, he could tell, and he suddenly stopped. “Uuuuugh,” I groaned, furious.

“We’ve only just begun,” he cooed, and I felt his hand rub across the red, swollen flesh between my legs. “And you’re so. Fucking. Wet.” He smeared my juices across the backs of my thighs, then ran his leather-clad fingertip around my entrance. I growled with my mouth closed, shutting my eyes against the delicious agony. He spread my lips apart and ran his finger up the center of them, stopping shy of my swollen clit. A whimper left me before I could stop it. “I’m sorry, did you want something?”

“You’re such an asshole,” I muttered. He flicked my clit again, and I held in my response this time. Rubbing my opening, he trailed down to my ass and ran the tip of his finger over it. I gasped, having been so recently reminded that I’m really, really into that.

“Oh, I see.” He rubbed it harder and watched me try to push my hips against him. “You like that spot, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I growled reluctantly. 

“What?” He spat onto his fingers and resumed his motions intently.

“I said yes!”

“Yes what?” One fingertip was pushing into me, but so slowly it made me wanna scream. His other hand now came over my clit, rubbing it gently.

“Fuck!” I swore as my skin sparkled all over. “Yes I like getting my ass fucked, goddammit!”

“Mm, you filthy creature,” he replied, clearly and dangerously delighted. “You just love to be filled up, don’t you?”

“Shit,” I breathed as his finger sank into my ass, the other hand still petting my clit. I shuddered, my body full of pangs of pleasure. Without warning his mouth sank down onto my cunt, and he started doing that shit he was so good at with it while fucking me with his finger. I was mewling and quivering in short order as my orgasm approached again, every lave of his tongue shooting sparks through me. “Ohmigod!”

Needless to say, his touches evaporated just as I started to feel desperate. I groaned hoarsely, miserable even though I knew it was gonna happen. 

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” he asked, tone condescending. “Not a single ‘please’? I told you you’d beg, little one. I expect to hear it before I let you cum.”

“Fuck off,” I advised him. 

“Alright,” he said, and he turned to walk away and sit down on one of the other chairs, his legs wide as one of his hands began to stroke his gorgeous cock. I felt a pang of something, almost fear, as his attentions evaporated. He’d made sure to pick a seat I could see, staring at me smugly while I watched him with obvious frustration. “I think I’ll get comfy, too,” he mused, opening his trousers a little more and unzipping his own coat. His pale, chiseled torso was the perfect backdrop for his beautiful, ponderous length as it lolled back against him and he tugged off his coat and gloves. I felt my heart rate spike dramatically at the sight of him, felt myself clench and unclench on the terrible vacancy in my lower half. 

“You’re so _ mean_,” I whined, riveted as he went back to lazily touching himself. 

“Am I?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve got you here all trussed up and ready to cum, if you just beg me nicely.” 

“But now I’m all cold and empty,” I pouted. His dark eyes flashed, and a terrifying smirk curled up on his face. I felt a phantom pressure slide down my chest, over my belly, and down over my cunt, and my eyes blew wide open as it began to rub against my clit. “Kylo!”

“So needy,” he tutted. Suddenly there was another phantom pressure, only this one was pushing up inside me, pressing against my g-spot. The two began to work in tandem, and I gasped and moaned, back arching against the tabletop. The pressure in my belly started to build up much faster than I’d expected, and my muscles started to shake involuntarily.

“Oh my God,” I panted. “Oh my _ God, _ I’m so close, fuck!”

“Are you?” The pressures eased, and I wailed.

“Nooooo _ please! _ Please let me cum!!!”

“You want everyone out there to hear you, little one?” he crowed smugly. Whatever Force witchcraft he was working, it stayed on me, just slow and just inconsistent enough to tie my nerve endings in knots, to make me twist and mewl pitifully.

“I just wanna cum let me cum _ please!!_”

“Who’s gonna let you cum?”

“You are, sir!”

“How precious, you think one little ‘sir’ is gonna get you what you want so badly.” I gasped for breath, furious and desperate as he continued to draw me out.

“My master lets me cum!”

“That’s right, I do,” he said, and he stood up as the phantom touches vanished. I sobbed, and I thought I might actually cry. “Whenever I want to.”

“Noooo-o-o _ please, _ pleeeeease!”

“You haven’t earned it and you know it,” he growled harshly, approaching me on the table and pressing his length against me as he reached out and grabbed my face with one huge, warm hand. His eyes speared mine, their intensity profound even for him. “I want you to _ beg, _ Aeon. Beg me in fucking poetry. I want you to beg so perfectly it moves me to fucking tears, or I will tease you on this table until you forget how to speak.”

Oh my fucking God, y’all. I seriously don’t even know what to say about that shit, but GOD. DAMN. I couldn’t believe my ears. I felt myself go limp, totally enthralled, even as my brain started to desperately seek words that might earn me the thing I needed so badly I wanted to scream. His cock moved slowly against my entrance, which didn’t help at all.

“I-- I--”

“Take your time,” he said, running his other hand along my thigh which felt like a symphony of sparkles to my poor overwhelmed body. “There’s no rush.” I panted, filled my lungs with precious air, trying to formulate something, anything.

“Master Ren,” I began, and I think all my insecurity and fear and adoration and desire poured itself out into my voice. “Please, I’m so hungry for you. Take what you need from me, consume me until we’re two stars crushed together under their own weight, _ please _ touch me and let me sing tribute to your cock and your mouth, I-I’m starving for it, please, please, sir, _ please! _ Before all the gods, by your merciless hand, _ please _let me cum!” 

He didn’t quite start crying, although a tear actually slid down my cheek, breathless as I was awaiting his response. But he looked totally awed, black eyes widened and mouth just slightly open, chest rising and falling with his breath, cock twitching against me. I blinked through watery eyes that were still locked on him. 

“Oh, little one,” he cooed softly. His thumb stroked my cheek, wiping the tear away. “You are so, _ so _beautiful, so sacred. How could I deny you?” My heart fell apart inside me, at that moment. I was totally spellbound, the same gooey rapture I’d felt when Matt told me how beautiful I looked when I came. Apparently if you mash love and sex together, what you get is my undying devotion. And possibly even my submission.

His finger gently moved over my clit, slow circles starting to wind me up right back to the trembling desperation I’d been feeling before. The broad head of his cock pushed inside me, and his breath caught as he eased the rest of the way in. He still hadn’t let go of my face, and his pace was so slow and so intense I felt more tears leak out of my eyes. He stared at me, never breaking eye contact, pumping me full and rubbing me giddy. 

“A-ah!” I bleated, my fried nerves still vibrating with pleasure, every muscle in my body tensing, bracing for an orgasm to rival the one he’d given me before.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

“P-perfect! Your cock-- aah-- feels-- _ perfect-- _ inside me!”

“Does it?”

“Yes!”

“Will it make you cum as perfectly as you beg?” _ Oh, my fucking GOD. _

“Yes, sir! P-please don’t stop!”

“Never,” he cooed, not picking up his pace at all but just continuing, steady and ruinous.

“Oooh God, oh fuck, oh _ please--_” My eyes clamped shut as the edge rose up huge and I teetered on it perilously.

“Eyes open!” he commanded, and I complied instantly. “Precious thing, I want to watch your soul leave your body when you cum for me.” _ WHAT. HOW CAN HE JUST? SAY THAT? TO ME?? _

“K-kylooo,” I bawled, “I’m so-- _ close-- _sir!”

“Hold it,” he ordered, but there was a strangely encouraging tone in his voice. Despite that, I started blubbering.

“_Nooo _please sir!”

“I know you can. Hold it.”

“I-I-I--”

“Do I need to stop?” he asked, totally calm as though he were offering to help me in some fucked up way. I felt like I was literally going to physically explode and I was in shock at my own body’s ability to endure. I shook my head as much as I could.

“Nonono _ please _don’t stop!!”

“Hold onto it for me, little one, you’re almost there,” he cooed.

“Kylo, please, please _ pleasepleaseplease--_”

“Ten more seconds.” I wailed like a child, tears streaming down my face. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One--”

I let out a howl that tore my throat, the orgasm that had ballooned into a state of near misery screaming out of my nerves, my very bones. I froze for a second, and then my muscles started to spasm uncontrollably. My eyes flew wide open, and even though they were still staring into Kylo’s, I saw nothing. I jerked and moaned, sobbing with my mouth wide open trying to gasp in air as pleasure that bordered on pain wracked my body. He never stopped with his hands or his thrusts, dragging it out as long as he could, his skin flushing bright red and his mouth hanging open as he watched me unravel.

“Oh, yes, _ fuck,_” he growled low in his throat. “You’re ready.”

“W-wh--”

“Remember? I said you were going to beg me to cum, and then beg me to stop.” My eyes flew open again, panic starting to hit me.

“I c-can’t!”

“You can, and you will,” he said, and he lifted me up off the table finally, still speared on his cock, my legs clinging weakly to his torso as he wrapped his arms around me and carried me up to the cockpit. I was delirious, limp, overcome, slightly terrified. He sat down in the co-pilot’s seat with me on his lap, and proceeded to rut up into me.

“GOD!” I yowled, already shaking with my knees on either side of him as he bounced me up and down on his length. “Ohh my God! _ Fuck! Kylo!!_”

“That’s right, little one,” he snarled. “Let that filthy mouth tell everyone who’s fucking you senseless.” My body was already tightening at the center, though the rest of it was threatening to abandon me. His arms held me just so, letting me start to lean back away from him just a little-- just enough to change his angle against my insides to the perfect one.

“_FUUUUCK!_” I couldn’t even stop it, so soon after the biggest orgasm I’d ever had, another one was already roaring up and tearing through me. I felt myself clench around him, and heard his guttural response. He lifted me up as he stood suddenly, cradling me in his arms even as his hips snapped into me, and if I’d been conscious enough I would’ve marveled at his strength. He rested my ass on the edge of the controls, holding me against him at first, then leaning me back onto my elbows. I’m not sure how I supported myself, to be honest. I think he might’ve been propping me up with the Force. 

When his hand started to rub my abused clit again, I actually screamed.

“Who’s your master?” he barked.

“You-u-u--”

“WHO?”

“_YOU _ ARE, SIR!”

“And what does your master do for you?”

“Makes me cum!”

“_Who _ makes you cum?”

“MY MASTER MAKES ME CUM!” I bawled, already careening through the sequence under his thrusts which were faster now, his hand which was more urgent. To be fair, I think all his call-and-response was the only reason I retained the power of speech.

“Are you gonna cum again for me?”

“YES, _ YES _ SIR!”

“When?”

“RIGHT NOW!!” A frenzy took me, my limbs shuddering and flailing and I heard something wet squelching between my legs, my eyes rolling up into my head. I clamped down on him so hard I wondered if it hurt, but he seemed only to grow more feral as he milked my orgasm yet again, then pulled out and tugged me off the controls. Standing me on the floor, he bent me over the panel this time and immediately plunged his cock back into me. I gave a weak cry as his hips took on a wild pace, and I felt a wet finger slide into my ass.

“Go ahead, scream,” he grunted, panting. “Tell them-- _ rrrrggh-- _ Tell them who fucks you-- _ arrgh-- _ until you can’t stand up.” His finger worked inside me and I leaned heavily on the panel, eyes too bleary to actually see what was going on outside the viewport window. I let out a loud, ragged moan.

“_Fuck, _ fuck my ass, please, _ pleaase!_”

“Do you-- _ shit-- _ want more, filthy little thing?”

“_Yes! _ Yes please sir!” He worked another finger inside my ass, and because I was so limp already it felt nothing but incredible. “_Kylo!_” I whimpered. “Fuck--”

“Do you-- _ aargh!-- _ love it?”

“Yes sir! Master Ren, I _ love _when you fill me up!”

“_Who _ fills you up?”

“YOU FILL ME UP MASTER REN!”

“Fuck-- you’re so-- fucking-- _ perfect--_”

“I’m gonna cum again sir!”

“Do it!” he barked. In my ecstatic obedience, I erupted all over again, and this time I felt like every nerve in my body was on fire. The puddle I was leaving on the floor got bigger, and I burbled incoherently.

“Are you-- ready to stop, little one?” he asked, despite not slowing down his ruthless hips or his fingers at all.

“Yessir,” I murmured. Suddenly I felt the phantom of lips on my sore clit, and I think I went cross-eyed.

“NoooOOO,” I wailed, fresh tears on my cheeks. “Oh FUCK _ OH FUCK!_”

“I said-- _ rrgh-- _ you’d cum-- until-- you fucking _ begged-- _ to stop,” he panted, and I could tell that all his fury from our fight before was being poured into fucking me until I left the mortal plain now. My nerves lit up, my body spiraling right towards the cliff again even though it was actually starting to become painful.

“KYLO!!”

“Beg!”

“_KyloooooOoooOooo--_”

“BEG!”

“Fuuuck,” I groaned, but something inside me wasn’t ready to beg, there was still some shred of pleasure that was seeking its exorcism, and if I’d had a drop of shame left I would’ve felt it. Alas. 

“Cum-- for me, apprentice,” he growled, cock pounding into me, fingers mirroring it, the Force still rough on my clit. _ I’m going to die here, _ I thought vaguely. _ Could be worse. _

“Sir, _ please!--_”

“CUM NOW!” As if on command, my body unleashed another orgasm, ripping through me like a demon exiting my body. 

“_FuuuUUCK! _PLEASE LET ME STOP, PLEASE!”

“You-- _ fuck!-- _ want to stop?” 

“_YEEES PLEASE!_” Without warning he pulled out his fingers and picked me up, spun me around, and pressed me back on my elbows on top of the console again. But this time he held my legs up, wide open, and when his hands moved back down to hold me by the jaw and thumb my clit, they stayed there.

“One more.” His cock sank into the red, inflamed mound of my cunt, making me want to kick and scream even though he held it still.

“Oooh God please no _ please no, _ sir, I can’t!”

“Yes, you can.”

“Master Ren please! I can’t!!”

“I’m right here, little one,” he crooned, holding my tearstained face firmly but not harshly as he looked into my eyes. With the frenzy that was there, there was also some strange longing. “Cum one more time for me.” 

“Sir--”

“You’re okay. Just once more. Can you do that?” I looked back at him, and something about this injection of tenderness fortified me. I nodded slowly, and his face curled into a tiny smile. “Good little thing.”

And then he started fucking me again and never in my life was I so convinced that my spirit was about to depart my body, sexy melodramatic dirty talk aside. His pace escalated steadily, his eyes totally intent on my face as his thumb went rapidly up and down over my clit.

“Fffff--”

“There you go,” he murmured. “Shit-- _ fuck--_” I was too far gone to say anything at all, I just made an endless stream of burbling, harsh groans and moans and mumbles. I felt my body jerking, seeking its final release, desperate to rest. “You-- you’re almost there-- fuck!” 

It didn’t take long, thank God, for me to clamp down on him and go stiff, and this time I fell utterly silent. He pounded into me, making inhuman sounds as I felt him spill out his release until his hips jerked unsteadily and his hand faltered. He gasped in air and watched me spasm, still inside me, unmoving. Finally I started to hyperventilate, and he touched my face as gently as he ever had.

“Shhhh shh, it’s alright, little one,” he almost whispered. “Breathe in, that’s right. Big, deep breaths.” His guidance led me to huge, slow inhales that filled my body up with substance, brought me back to the present to feel myself pulse and tingle in the ragged afterglow of whatever dark arts he’d just performed on my body. I made an attempt to form a word, but it was unsuccessful. “Hush, sweet thing, it’s alright. Here, let me help you.” 

I was in his arms, cradled like I was made of paper and glass, and he carried me into the ship’s head where he turned on the water in the tiny sink and wiped my face with his wet fingers.

“I’m sorry I fucked you in my dad’s shitty old ship with no shower in it,” he said wryly. I just stared at him, fully enraptured and still not entirely capable of speech. Plus, I didn’t think he was actually sorry, anyway, even if he tried to hide that he still loved this ship. “I’ll dress you and we can go back to the bedroom, okay?” I nodded, engrossed in his plush lips and beautiful nose and those wells of depth that stared at me from within his eyes. I was fucked right up.

He gently dressed me and himself, retrieved our sabers, and then proceeded to carry me out of the ship and back into the hangar bay. I’m pretty sure the personnel at their stations or going about their duties scattered like roaches as we appeared, but I only had eyes for him. And he only looked away from me when he needed to be sure where he was walking; our gazes transfixed on each other.

When we arrived at his bedroom, he re-undressed me and himself and walked me into a warm shower where he just held me close to him for a while before he gently soaped me up and rinsed me off. When I reached out clumsy, weakened hands to do the same for him, he laughed and guided them across his pectorals, his shoulders, his arms, his unreasonable abs. Any actual washing that happened for him I’m fairly sure he just did himself, but I never wanted to take my hands away from his body. Once again he dried me off gingerly, and dried himself, and walked me back out into his bed. I felt like a cloud, purposeful thoughts all driven from my brain, basking in the sheer immensity of my feelings, of his tenderness.

“What are you thinking, little one?” he asked me sweetly as we laid under the covers and he held me, looking down into my eyes. I felt my throat close up around the Big Three Words, even though I’d already told Matt, which seemed so silly. But my body remembered bad things, still, and so I still had to coax it into cooperating with me.

“I… I’m… just.” I took in a slow, deep breath again. _Okay, don’t force it._ “I’m so small, around you, sometimes.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, chuckling a little.

“You make me so small. When you fuck me like that, and then you take care of me.”

“I never think of you as small, when I fuck you. Or when I take care of you. Or ever, really.”

“Really?” I asked, fascinated. 

“No. I just… Well. It’s not important.”

“It’s so important,” I countered, putting my hands on his chest. “Tell me? Please?” He sighed, and looked a little embarrassed.

“I can’t believe you, sometimes. I wonder if you’re a dream. When I get to watch you just… fall to pieces…” He stroked my face. “When I get to hold you afterwards. I want to make you as delirious as I feel when I’m with you, or when I wish I was.”

_ Oh, well, fuck. _

“Kylo,” I breathed, starstruck.

“I can’t believe the things you said just now, when I told you to beg me. Please, tell me they were real things,” he said in a soft voice, taking one of my hands in his and pressing it to his lips.

“They poured right outta my heart. My brain wasn’t exactly working,” I giggled. His eyes shimmered, staring at me like he’d just heard something so good he was struggling to believe it.

“I’m so in love with you, Aeon,” he whispered. “I’m so captivated by you. You say the most unbelievable things to me, and then I’m hearing them everywhere I go.”

My heart stood still in my chest, and time stood still around me.

“Oh, wow,” I sighed. “Oh, my God. I… Matt told me it would slip out when I didn’t mean for it to, and he was almost right, but you beat me to it. I’m in love with you.” I almost wanted to cry, but I also didn’t? Like, I was just beyond it, at that moment. 

“You talk to Matt about me?” he asked, brow furrowing even though he smiled and maybe even blushed a little.

“All the time.” I giggled. “I fell for him, too, but I told him first. He said it’s magical that I can know you both, and love you both. As individuals.”

“He’s right,” Kylo said, pulling me even closer.

“I think you’re both magical, and I wanted to help you ever since I got here. I could tell you felt alone. But I wasn’t doin’ so hot.” 

“I haven’t been doing very hot, as you say, for a long time,” he muttered. “I’m... sorry about today. Things with Rey are complicated. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I just left you here.” That genuinely surprised me.

“Wow. Thanks for that. I’m not tryna be rude, but I kinda assumed you fucking me six ways from Sunday was just you avoiding addressing it.” He looked slightly guilty.

“I admit, that was most of the idea.”

“You thought I wouldn’t bring it up again later?” I asked him, raising an eyebrow. 

“I was absolutely certain you would,” he replied, smirking just a little.

“What changed your mind?” I was _ very _ curious, to be honest. His face fell.

“I… well. I think taking care of you just now reminded me that I owe you my trust and honesty, since you give me so much of yours.” _ Wow, _ said the Voice of Reason from its quiet place in the back of my head. _ Like, wow. He coulda just not thought about that at all. He’s REALLY trying. _I was pretty touched, I won’t lie.

“I’m sorry I was so extra about asking you, but I do wish you’d tell me,” I said quietly. I felt his body heave a huge sigh. 

“Rey and I were bonded by my old master. Through the Force. It’s not like the bond you and I have, though. At least, I don’t think it works that way. But ever since then, I’ve felt this… I don’t know. She beat me twice, and she rejected me twice. It hurts to think about her.” He wasn’t looking at me, was staring sidelong into the pillow under his head, mouth tight and frowning.

“It’s okay, Kylo. I know you were bonded. I figured you felt bad about pretty much everything that happened between y’all. But what about today? Why did you go alone, why are we trying to follow her?” I asked, my voice gentle. He took a moment to ponder his response, then looked back at me.

“Ever since you told me you saw us fighting in that vision, I’ve been wondering when it will happen. How it will happen. I guess... I’m just ready for that reckoning.” He looked at me, seeming a little lost, but sincere. 

“Okay, that makes sense. I can be there for that, you know,” I pointed out, tapping his nose with my finger. “Unless you’d rather I wasn’t, but you can just tell me that. You don’t have to hide feeling stuff from me. Even shame. I know what shame does, when you hide it.”

“I... just… got scared.” He kissed my hand again, looking at it instead of my face. I could feel the tension in him as he said that word, the halting strain of his voice as he pushed honesty through it. “That you would think I was weak or foolish, for following her and for feeling so much like I need to know what I’m supposed to do to fix how badly I failed with her. I don’t even want her to be my apprentice anymore. I just… we’ve been pitted against each other. I have to figure that out.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m just babbling now.”

“You’re talking about how you feel.” I beamed at him. “I’m so incredibly proud of you.” 

“What?” he asked, brow furrowed. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”

“You’re allowed to feel that sometimes, yanno.”

“I… wasn’t, before.”

“You are now.” We just looked at each other for a moment, and I felt my heart going all gross again. _ Fuck. I’m so fucking invested, now. This thing better work out. _ I sighed. “I can’t fix it for you, Kylo, and I won’t try. But I mean, I’m here for you either way.” His smile was faint, his eyes hopeful as he kissed my hand again. 

“This is what I mean by your being honest with me. You always are.” It was my turn to feel a pang of guilt in my gut, and I took a deep breath. _ Time to be almost honest as he thinks I am, I guess… _

“I… I have to tell you something.”

“What?” he asked, seeming unconcerned. I bit my lip. _ Well, actually there’s a couple things I should tell you, _ I thought. _ But I’ll start with one. _

“I know what Matt did.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not gonna lie, that was the best smut i've ever written *fans self*
> 
> wow so many people comment on this and tell me that i'm helping them by writing this thing and honestly, i started writing it to help myself and i just hoped some other people might enjoy it, too. so um, yeah, i'm not crying YOU'RE crying... 
> 
> thank y'all so much <3


	58. Chapter 58

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get really fuckin' emo for a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more smut in this chapter...!

Kylo and I laid there and talked for a pretty long time. I asked him about what happened at the Jedi Academy, and he told me that both he and Matt were being dogged by Snoke for a long time, and they both arose because even at the tender age of five or six years old, he’d already been dogging Ben, too. They were all struggling, but Kylo focused so intently on protecting their system that he was less mired up in the feelings. He channeled his into a purpose. Matt, on the other hand, just bottled them up. 

When it happened, Matt had flown off the handle. Snoke had been there in both their heads, but also he’d been projecting through the Force and appeared before them to offer them a place by his side. Matt had retreated, Kylo said, and it was his choice to accept that offer. Ever since then, he’d been the primary pilot, and Ben, whose growing up process was already slowed dramatically, eventually stopped aging at all. I listened to his story and thought about how, around me at least, Matt only seemed angry once; about the Jedi (read: about Luke). He really only seemed panicked once, too; about using the Force. 

“You think he’s gonna be mad that you told me all that?” I asked Kylo after he’d recounted it. 

“Probably, but you said you already knew what happened.” He raised his eyebrows a little. “How’d you find out?” _ Shit. This is the part I’m not being honest about yet. _ I felt intensely uncomfortable, in that moment. Part of me wanted to come clean so badly, however the vast majority of me wanted to both remain alive and remain on this ship as Kylo’s apprentice and apparently also his lover for real, now. And fuck, Matt would probably be _ really _ unhappy about it, which hurt my heart. I mean I was already in shit deep, if I ever decided to come clean later. _ Uuuugh. _ Don’t hide things from the people you love, kids. 

“When I say ‘the Force told me’...”

“You mean?” His tone invited me to elaborate.

“I… I mean, it told me in a vision. I guess I struggled to believe it, at first.” _ Well, I didn’t really, but only because Luke had no reason to lie about it... _ He looked at me, and I was afraid he was slightly skeptical. But maybe I was just paranoid.

“I’m sorry. It’s so confusing, sometimes,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. 

“It’s alright. I know what you mean,” he replied, stroking the fuzz on my head. 

“Thanks.” I smiled at him, then realized I had one more confession I should probably make._ It’s paradoxical, that I’m talking about all this shit to Kylo and not Matt, _ I thought. _ Or is it? I mean, a lot of this shit is actually Matt’s problems, which he hides behind being a sweetheart. Why would he talk about it, when he could be being nice to me? _ I kinda got it, honestly. But I also knew it wasn’t gonna keep working for long. It dawned on me in that moment that Matt had his own redemption arc in this story. “There’s another thing I meant to mention,” I said finally, and I couldn’t help myself but offer a sheepish little smile.

“Really?” Kylo asked, his expression almost impressed. “I leave you here for all of two hours or something, and suddenly you have all kinds of reports.”

“Listen…” But he was chuckling. I braced to see that look of fondness fall from his face. “So, I saw Ben on the ship while you were away.”

“Ben?” His brow furrowed.

“Yeah, he just showed up and brought me up here to show me something.”

“Show you what?” Now he seemed a little uneasy, like he could think of a few things Ben might’ve shown me that he would’ve preferred me not to see. Oof.

“He… he showed me the secret room in your closet,” I said quietly. 

“Oh.” He seemed puzzled. “Why?”

“Well, I dunno exactly why,” I said, not sure if I was technically lying or not. It’s not like the kid had spoken or left a note, but he did pretty pointedly show me Matt’s stowaway saber. “But I… ugh Kylo, I’m sorry.”

“Speak plainly, please, Aeon,” he said, more imploring than demanding. I think I was making him a little nervous.

“Well, I, um, I reached out to like, just barely touch the helmet a little bit, right? After everything that happened on Mustafar, and all that? And it just-- it fuckin’ _ disentigrated. _ Like it just turned into ash when I’d barely touched it, and I have no idea why.”

Kylo blinked at me, like he was trying to fully grasp the meaning of my words. 

“You touched my grandfather’s helmet?” he asked, and he looked more confused than anything. 

“Yes.”

“And it fell to ashes when you did?”

“Yeah.”

“And…?”

“Um, that’s it. I just feel like such an asshole, even though it was like some bizarre accident.” Then I remembered Luke’s throwaway comment that maybe Anakin was up to some mischief. “Or, maybe it wasn’t? Just, I didn’t mean to do it.” But Kylo was looking away from me and into his thoughts, brow knit, wheels turning as they so often were. My eyes lingered on him, awaiting a response a little anxiously. 

“Hang on,” he said suddenly, as though he was deciding something, and he turned and swung his legs out of bed and got up to walk right into his closet. I scrambled up after him, not sure exactly what the hell was going on. 

“Kylo?” He made no reply, only opened the door and went down the white hallway and into the room. I followed, nearly stumbling into him when I rounded the corner. He stood looking at the pedestal where the helmet had once been. The thing that was most bizarre about whatever he was thinking right then is that he didn’t seem truly angry, at all. He just stood there and looked at the thing, full of black rocks or whatever they were, the pile of dust still laying on them right where I’d left it. He took another slow step towards it, and another, closing the space. For a split second I just watched him go, momentarily entranced by the fact that he was still fully nude and still fully one of the most beautiful human beings I’d had the great good fortune to lay eyes on. But then I shook myself back into the present and padded quietly up behind him. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, still feeling guilty. He just looked down at the ashes, and then reached a hand up to touch them. The fine dust powdered around his fingers and collapsed down into the rocks under it.

“You think he’s really at peace now?” came his voice finally, soft and almost sad. I glanced between the ashes and the edge of his face, which from where I was standing was all I could see. 

“I mean, I think so. It certainly felt like it.” I took a step closer to the pedestal, looking at the ashes and thinking about the deafening cracks of the stone and metal of the fortress as it came down around us. About the smile on Anakin’s face when he appeared from under the vision of his darkest self. “If this was the last piece of him that was left, maybe it was just waiting to go, too.” 

I glanced back at Kylo only to see his huge, beautiful shoulders quaking. His face was turning red around the nose, eyes blinking rapidly as they shone. _ Oh fuck. _

“I think of what he said to me every day,” he murmured. “Me and Matt both cling to our pain. Ben does too, it’s why he’s so little, still.”

“He looked a little older, when I saw him,” I said quietly, trying to give Kylo the most hopeful face I could muster. He looked at me again finally, and his mouth crumpled. 

“I killed Han Solo for him. I thought it would end his pain. I really thought it was the right thing to do for us.” His voice was hoarse, weak with the effort not to bawl. My heart shattered as that struck me, and I reached out instinctively to touch his arm. “I’m such a fucking failure, Aeon. I just wanted to protect us, and I made it so much worse.”

“Oh, love,” I murmured, stepping over to him as his hand fell away from the ashes of something a lot bigger than just a helmet. My hands reached up and took his face gently on either side, and he closed his eyes as tears began to leak out. “You were just a kid, when Snoke took you. What he taught you was wrong.”

“My dad is still dead.” His voice was a little louder, a little more pressured with grief. “_ Our _ dad. How does anyone forgive something like that? How does Mom--” Finally his voice broke, and his sobs started to push their way out of him. Bending his head down, he wrapped his hands around my forearms, gripping them slightly. 

“Kylo,” I cooed, but now I wanted to cry. Our connection was always intact, now, and I felt waves of his pain run through me like they were my own. I pulled his face down gently to rest on my shoulder, and his tears were warm on my skin. Trailing his hands down my arms, he slipped them around my back and wrapped me up close to him as he wept into the crook of my neck. I ran my fingers gently through his tousled black hair. “How does anybody forgive anybody?”

“I don’t know,” he sniffled, his chest heaving in strained breaths.

“Well, because they decide that showing love is more important than clinging to pain, I reckon.” I gotta give Anakin props for setting that one up, honestly. It made total sense, and I’d never even thought about it that way before. “It doesn’t mean you don’t gotta work on making things better, but it also doesn’t mean you have to run away and become something terrible just ‘cuz that’s what people say you are.” 

He sagged against me, his weeping quieter now but by no means over with. I nestled my cheek against his ear and let him cry awhile. My own tears fell, but they weren’t overwhelming. I was thinking about some of my own past behaviors, and some of the shit I’d been put through. It sucks to feel like you’ll never be forgiven when you’re genuinely sorry, or when whatever you did ended up punishing you back. Patricide was outside the scope of my experience, of course, but this was Star Wars. We all know the Skywalker family drama is always turned up to 11.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. 

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” He rose back upright finally, hands coming onto my shoulders. His face was puffy and red with crying. 

“Thank you.” I smiled at him, and reached up to wipe the streaky tears off his cheeks. 

“Anytime,” I replied. The suggestion of a sad smile was on his face as he turned towards the exit, tugging at my hand as he did so. I went with him back to the bed where he collapsed belly-first, heaving a heavy sigh. I climbed onto him as he laid there, perching and gently rubbing his back, counting the little moles there. 

“Mmmm,” he hummed. “That’s nice.” I stroked along the tense muscles on his neck and along his spine. I wasn’t a massage therapist, but I knew a knotted muscle when I felt one, and rubbing them patiently tended to at least sorta help them iron out.

“You deserve someone to be sweet to you, too, yanno,” I pointed out, smiling as I gently pressed on a knot in his shoulder. His head turned to the side against the pillow, and he looked at me from the corner of his eye through beautiful messy black locks.

“My apprentice _ is _ very wise.” He was smiling. “And very kind.”

“My master is very strong, and very sweet but that’s a huge secret so I’ll never tell.” I grinned at him as I rubbed his deltoid muscles. They were so large and so stone solid anyway that I wasn’t sure I was helping, but God did I like touching them. 

“Careful, little one,” he said, voice falling soft and just a little bit husky.

“What?” I asked, shifting my weight to rub his middle back.

“You calling me that unprompted makes me want to take you right here, and I don’t think your lovely little cunt could stand it.” 

Well, that was one way to make my heart start beating down there. I could feel how sore I was, but damn. It was tempting to drag this out anyway.

“You_ could _ be nice to me, yanno,” I suggested quietly, rolling my eyes. “Occasionally.” I didn’t expect him to do anything about that, except maybe laugh. So when he rolled beneath me and caught me in his enormous hands, setting me down on his stomach, I giggled with delight. 

“Do you want me to?” he asked, and his eyes were surprisingly serious as they gazed at me from below, hands on my flesh like he was holding a sacred vessel.

“Um, yeah,” I replied, blushing and feeling weirdly shy all of a sudden. “I like both, remember?” 

“I do remember.” His fingers were tracing ever so lightly along the skin of my torso, making me shiver a little. They drew feathery circles around my nipples, and my breath hitched. He watched his hands where they drew patterns on my hips, running down my thighs. “Do you want Matt instead of me? I know he’s gentle.” he asked softly. _ What? Did-- is he being insecure about the kind of sex we have right now? _

“Wow, no, you goober,” I laughed. “It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. And I’m just offering a suggestion, Kylo. It’s okay if you prefer the rough stuff, it’s not like I’m complaining!” _ Well, my body might be complaining later, but who cares. Worth it. _

“It’s less of a preference and more just… natural, so far, with you.” Now his hands were snaking around to my back, leaving more faint tingly trails there. “I wouldn’t want you to be unsatisfied.”

“If I’m with you, I don’t expect the same thing as what happens with Matt. Even if there’s some similarity, it’s never gonna be the same, and I don’t want it to be. Because you’re different people, and I love that.”

“Would you want something like that with me, too?” His eyes were so serious, but I could see right past them. Clearly he thought, for God knows what reason, that people were only interested in his aggressive dominance. I smiled and blushed a little, giving a shrug.

“I mean, yes, if it’s something you wanted, too. If not, that’s okay! You don’t _ have _ to have super romantic sex with me--”

Before I could make a quip about how right now I was a little sensitive anyway, Kylo wordlessly gripped my legs from beneath and slid himself down even further under me. His nose nestled in the inner crease of my thigh, and before I knew it, his tongue landed soft and wet over the lips of my cunt.

“Oh!” I gasped, hands shooting down to grab his hair. The very first touches were almost overwhelming, I was still so raw, but his tongue met me with gentle, slow movements. His eyes were closed, as though he only wanted to focus on the task of tending to the part of me he’d ravaged so completely only hours before. I ran my fingers through his hair gently as my thighs twitched on either side of his brow, watching transfixed as he lapped between my folds, pushed his big lips up against my swollen clit, and massaged my entrance with his tongue in turns. “Oooh, oh wow, _ Kylo,_” I breathed, my nerves vibrating. The extra sensitivity was proving to be an extremely good thing.

His hands had been holding me up by gripping each cheek of my ass, and he massaged my glute muscles absently while he devoured me. Which I have to admit was both hot and super relaxing. My breathing got heavier and heavier as I felt my body start to flush. If all my orgasms with him before had been like lightning, this one was building up to be so slow and so warm that it would slip out of me like water. 

Finally his eyes opened and swam up towards my face, watching me without his usual ferocity. Now their intensity was just as powerful as always, but it came with a sweet desire to watch me quietly melt away, to see the tension fall from my body instead of building it up to ecstatic, terrifying heights. And I really was _ totally _into both.

“Sh-shit,” I moaned, breath catching as I started to mount towards the peak. My eyes could look nowhere but his, and I gripped his hair with need and let my mouth fall slack. All the movements of his tongue sent relaxing waves up through my body that started to get bigger and bigger. As I got closer, I started to swivel into his rhythm, increasing the pressure just a very little. “Oh, fuck, I’m gonna-- I’m gonna cum--”

My body started to tremble, the heat inside me finally spilling out as my hips stuttered on his face, my inner walls contracting. Little quivering moans fell from my lips, back arching to release every last drop of tension from my muscles. When it was gone and I fell limp, he took me by the waist and the leg and managed to shift me enough to pull himself back out. He sat up, one hand now the small of my back as I sat in his lap with my cheek on his shoulder. I could feel his cock pressing against the skin of my inner thigh.

“How do you feel, my fierce little one?” he asked so softly and so gently, face close to mine.

“Incredible,” I replied, eyelids heavy, hands resting on his arm and torso. My body was still sending little shivers through me. He smiled that very special smile that always looked so sweet on his face. 

“You’re radiant,” he cooed, rubbing his nose against my cheek. “Would you like me to take you, just as slow and easy?”

“Oh,” I exhaled, a thrill radiating out from my heart. “_Yes._” His eyes met mine before he pressed his slick lips into mine, a gentle and hungry kiss that was all too short. But he took me by the waist and below the knee, and carefully turned me over onto the bed against the pillows. Hovering over me, his massive form was awe-inspiring. He lifted my knee gently to place my leg around his waist, shifted so his cock was pressed with quiet need against my cunt. I slipped my other leg around him delicately.

For a moment, the air felt strangely heavy. Looking up into his eyes, I saw something there I hadn’t before. It was hard to describe, but I got the distinct sense that he was filled with longing, and at the same time a little frightened to actually receive what he wanted so deeply. My eyes were wide, taking in that feeling, recognizing it viscerally. 

Kylo eased his ample girth into me as though it might break me. And though it was slower than usual, because my muscles were so bruised, the light of my previous climax was still filling me and there was no moment of pain. Only an ever-increasing fullness, ascending to perfection. Already my legs were quivering, and I sucked in a breath. 

“Is that alright?” he asked in a near-whisper.

“Yes,” I panted. I took his cheek in my hand, and he leaned down to resume the kiss he’d broken off before. As his tongue gently traced over mine, he began to move his hips. I moaned into his mouth, the heat in my body already compounding. He pulled his lips away so he could kiss my chin and my jaw and my neck; he nuzzled me, breathed on my ear, his every touch starving and adoring. His pace was relaxed, and instead of wrapping up tight to contain whatever sensations came my way I just lolled into them, gasping and whimpering and touching his shoulder, neck, hair. Really, slow sex is kind of amazing. I could feel _ everything, _ couldn't help but feel it, as it got bigger and bigger. I was engrossed in his every movement, the little gasps he made as he started to get closer to his own orgasm. When his eyes met mine again, they were so serious and so gentle, watching me, but not just for my responses to his touch.

“Thank you,” he whispered. This is gonna sound weird, but it reminded me of the scene when he killed Han. Just like in that scene, his eyes were looking into another’s for something a lot deeper than what was on the surface, and always what he sought lay hidden inside himself. In that scene, he didn’t find it. His ‘thank you’ always seemed so desperate, like he was trying to summon the relief he’d expected. This time, though, it was different. 

“I love you,” I whispered back in between huge breaths.

“I know.” The deepest moments of his thrusts became a little deeper, a little harder, a little more urgent. Enough to push me over the edge, into the ocean of release as my body collapsed into contractions once more. My eyelids fluttered, still trying desperately to cling to his gaze, to watch his eyes sparkle as he jerked and moaned and spilled into me. For one perfect moment, we were both lost in that strange place. Then, he sagged over me, head collapsing as he pressed his cheek to mine, panting. “I love you back.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, fingers in his hair, blissful and grateful and maybe even hopeful. _ God, these two. How can they both be so… _ I wondered, as I thought about how quiet and tender Kylo had just been, somehow so different than Matt’s own fascinated reverence. _ How the fuck are they both this into me? Oh, who cares. I’m not about to look this gift horse in the mouth. _ He rolled off me, laying close with his hand resting on my thigh as he caught his breath. Neither of us said anything; nothing needed saying.

Then, his communicator buzzed. I hoped faintly that it never buzzed in the middle of us fucking. That would be the worst. Then again, knowing him, he might not even notice.

“Supreme Leader, we’ve located the Resistance ship on Kijimi,” said the voice on the other end. He sighed and sat up, reaching down onto the floor to pluck the thing from his clothes. 

“Take us there. I’ll join the hunting party myself.”

“Yes, sir.” I looked at him, remembering just what we’d been in the middle of before I got so spectacularly laid. 

“Rey?” I asked quietly, less anxious than I’d been the last time by a long shot.

“Yes.” He looked back at me, his face almost grave. “Do you want to accompany me to the surface?”

“Actually…” I murmured, kinda uncertain if I wanted to go, now. I felt weird about it, like I was intruding on some private interaction. He needed this reckoning, after all, even if it was yet another thing he looked at that didn’t show him what he wanted to see. “You should go alone. At least to begin with. Will you tell me if you need me?” His surprise was followed quickly by a faint look of gratitude. 

“Of course, my apprentice.” He stood up from the bed, one again rifling through his clothes until he pulled out the knife. “I’ll leave this here.” I nodded at him, and watched him return to his closet to put the knife away in his secret room. I sat up as he emerged and put his clothes on quickly. I reached out to touch his arm when he was done. 

“Be careful,” I implored him softly. I hadn’t forgotten that this was dangerous. He nodded, putting his saber on his belt, and turned to go. Sighing, I decided to wash off and suit up in case this went south. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear Aeon was just gonna be nice to him and then they went and said the 'master' word and Kylo was like....... *heavy breathing* 
> 
> so yeah anyway Big Feels y'all T_T
> 
> your comments are so awesome!! thank you <3


	59. Chapter 59

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a whole lot happens really fucking fast!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big time RoS spoilers in this one, y'all.

I was still pondering the emotional roller coaster I’d been on all day (I mean, from pissed off to actually fighting to fightfucking to aftercare to literally confessing love to processing the past to Kylo actually sobbing to ridiculously romantic sex? Fucking wow) as I sat on Kylo’s bed fully clothed and with my saber on me. I was ready to head downstairs to see if there were developments, since he’d been down there looking for almost an hour and I was starting to get antsy.

Just as I stood up and turned towards the door, I felt a funny little pull from behind me. I looked back to see Ben standing in the room, looking at me like he was afraid. My brow furrowed.

“Ben? Is something wrong?” Of course, the first thought in my head was that Kylo wasn’t okay. He pointed his hand towards the closet, and my eyes followed, confused.

And then I heard the hum of lightsabers. 

“Fuck!” I shouted, and dashed towards the entrance to the little room, slamming the button that opened the door. The sound of sabers clashing got even louder, so I clambered down the hall and around the corner. When I stumbled into the room, my eyes blew wide open to see Kylo and fucking REY duking it out-- and suddenly they careened into the pedestal where Vader’s helmet had once been, shards of it clattering to the floor.

“She’s on the ship!” Kylo shouted, which I found completely baffling-- until I remembered that they were Force-bonded, and could see one another but not their surroundings. Which meant that Rey was really there, in that room, somehow.

“HEY!” I hollered, and both of their heads snapped towards me at once.

“Aeon!” shouted Kylo, eyes wide, and instantly Rey was hurling herself towards me with her saber high. In less than a blink my weapon was in my hand and I caught hers in its downward arc, swinging it to the side and striking at her. She parried, but I swung from beneath and made her block again before she could attack. I pressed my advantage of having her on the defensive, pushing her backwards through the rubble. She was crazy powerful, and I could feel her energy bristling against mine. Kylo was no longer there, I realized, which meant that he was down on the planet and probably heading back as fast as possible.

“Rey!” I called out as I swung towards her, purposefully looking for places to strike that wouldn’t kill her.

“How do you know my name?” she barked, expression surprised and angry as she deflected me.

“I’m trying to help you!” I parried a thrust of hers as I felt her fear boost her aggression. 

“What? _ How?_” I mean, to be fair, her skepticism was reasonable. Her strikes were less desperate but she kept at it, so I risked letting her back on the offensive for a moment.

“I’m trying to help Kylo!”

“What? That’s the opposite of helping me!” she retorted, and I deflected a blow of hers that was a little harder, huffing.

“Ugh! Not like _ that! _ With getting better!” I switched hands to try and get her back defending, and it worked. She parried just barely and scampered backwards, trying to adjust.

“Better? You mean coming back to the light?” She was slowing as I slowed, taking longer pauses between strikes. I realized that it made sense that she was confused by my phrasing, because the whole ‘coming back to the light’ concept felt like such a weird agenda when really what I wanted was for him to not be totally fucking miserable anymore. But I supposed they were pretty close to the same thing, sorta? Possibly?

“Uh, yeah.” Now she paused, saber still drawn and still pointed at me, but clearly confused.

“Why?” she asked, brow wrinkling.

“It’s a long story--” I replied, but before I could say anything else she leapt at me and began a flurry of strikes.

“I don’t believe you!” she informed me loudly as she swung and I blocked and parried, trying to recover from my surprise.

“Cut it out!” I spun and made a much more aggressive strike than I had so far, starting to get angry. “I’m tryna talk to you!” This did nothing to deter her, in fact I’m pretty sure my frustration coming out in the form of fighting harder did the opposite. She scowled at me and our dance got heated, contentious, and I matched her because I had no idea how else I was supposed to deal with it. She caught one of my blows and swung powerfully, knocking my saber out of my hand and onto the floor, its blade shutting off. For a split second, I was flooded with panic. 

Of course, panic seems to help me out sometimes. Before she could land her next strike, she flew backwards into the wall with a mighty gust of the Force that I hurled instinctively at her much as I’d hurled it at Kylo all those weeks ago. I glanced around for my weapon, but then I saw the drawer I was next to. _Matt’s saber!_ I reached in and grabbed it as she crumpled to the floor, growling and shoving herself back up. Turning on the unfamiliar weapon, I saw its blade glow furious, spitting blue as I brandished it, unmoving. _ It’s just as unstable as Kylo’s, but it’s… not red? _When she saw it, surprised melted almost too quickly into fury on her face.

“Is that _ Ben Solo’s _ lightsaber?” She didn’t wait for a reply before she leapt towards me, slashing with fresh gusto, forcing me to block them rapidly. Apparently she’d already decided I was a thief, stealing Ben’s very innocence. I kinda got her logic, but it made her so angry that I felt her power surge and point itself dangerously towards me.

“No! Rey, stop!” 

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you!” she demanded, a series of spinning strikes raining down on me. I shielded myself from each one, trying to think of one thing to say between the haze of frustration and adrenaline. _Oh! Duh!_

“Luke sent m--” In the split second I hadn’t been fully focused on our fight, her blade plunged through my gut. For a moment, the pain was indescribable, knocking the wind right out of my lungs. Her eyes were wide, staring at me in shock and sudden, creeping horror as she froze, and turned her saber off. I fell to my knees, stunned. 

“Luke?” Suddenly, her voice was small and afraid. I sucked in air, swallowed, felt myself start to get very far away from my body. I nodded weakly, barely aware that I’d turned Matt’s saber off. But my hand still clung to it, white-knuckled. She was backing away from me, towards what I realized dully was another door, very well hidden at the other end of the room from Kylo’s closet. _Shit. I never even noticed that._ My eyes were glazed as I looked up at her, panting. 

“D-do you have it?” I asked. _Why else would she be here, if not for the knife?_

“Yes,” she replied, stopping again. It took her reply a moment to sink in past my haze.

“Go,” I urged her, barely nodding towards the door. “Help your f-friends.” Still staring at me, baffled and upset, she paused in hesitation. “Go!” I barked, and she turned on her heel to open the other door and ran. I swayed there, suddenly no longer able to feel my pain. My thoughts were like a soup I was wading through, trying to grab onto one that would make any sense about what to do next. 

_ Lucky. _

Oh yeah, that was a good call. I tried to move, but toppled over onto the floor instead, groaning. _Fuck. I might be a goner,_ I thought dully. I tried to look around, but my vision was starting to blur. Suddenly, clear as day, I saw Luke standing in front of me, once again like he was really there. Well, mostly I saw his feet, being as I was on the floor. 

“Aeon!” he said urgently. “Aeon, don’t give up!”

“Dude,” I murmured between ragged breaths. “I’m so dead.”

“Stop it. Use the Force!” he replied, almost too concerned to be grouchy. “I know you can.” My eyes swam up towards his face, which was both stern and afraid. He reached out a hand towards me. Looking at it for a moment, I felt a surge of something, like a wave pushing me up. I reached out and grabbed it, and he pulled me to my feet. I nearly stumbled over, gasping, clamping my hand over the actual hole in my body and grimacing._ At least there’s no blood. That would be gross._ I glanced around. Luke was gone.

“Fuck,” I growled, and started slowly towards the door Rey had just exited. 

I was on my way to the bridge, leaning against the wall of the corridor. Don’t ask me why I decided to try that first instead of the medical bay. I wanna say the Force was tugging me there, but I was too delirious at the time to know for sure. Then again, it was a safe bet that everything I was doing aside from dying was because of the Force, at that moment.

“Aeon!” I heard a shout ahead of me, and looked up to see Mitaka of all people dashing down the hall. “Aeon, are you alright?”

“No,” I groaned as he put his arm under me, pulling me over to lean on him. “Where’s Kylo?” 

“He’s probably landing in the hangar bay as we speak,” the Lieutenant replied. I felt a wave of relief wash over me as we forged forward down the hall. “You need medical, right now.” 

“What about the Resistance people?” I asked.

“They’re in custody, all but the girl.”

“Let them go,” I murmured, too soupy to consider that I might be outing myself as not very much on the First Order’s side at all. Ahead I saw the entrance to the command deck, and frankly I was impressed that I’d almost gotten there. 

“You’re mad, ducky,” he replied. “What happened to you?” 

“I--” before I could finish my sentence, I saw the doors ahead slide open and, you’re gonna love this… fucking _Armitage Hux_ walked out. 

“TRAITOR!” he shouted, pointing as soon as his eyes landed on me. “I’ll get you this time! This is _my_ ship, _my_ army!”

“Oh, fuck me,” I groaned. Mitaka had stopped in surprise.

“Where the bloody hell did _ you _come from?” the Lieutenant asked as he stared at the ginger, and I almost laughed. Hux snarled.

“I am here to take my rightful place as Supreme Leader, and you won’t stop me this time! Nor will Kylo Ren! I’ve ordered the cannons to blast his filthy shuttle out of the sky--”

Before I could feel a crashing wave of terror and rage and probably homicidality, a blaster shot struck Hux in the chest and he went flying backward and down into the floor in a very still heap. I glanced over and saw that Mitaka had drawn his weapon. In my haze I thought I saw the tip of it smoking, but blasters don't really do that so maybe my brain was just embellishing for my end-of-life entertainment.

“Hot damn,” I said, grinning weakly. “You bad, Duffy.”

“Could never stand that odious man,” he tutted, replacing his gun in its holster. I tried to take another step forward, but for some reason the floor got a lot closer instead. 

“Shit,” I swore, unable to feel my legs collapse. 

“Aeon!” Mitaka cried, but he couldn't catch me before I was lying crumpled on the floor. He knelt by me with a hand on my shoulder before pulling out his communicator. “I need M-47777 on emergency protocol in front of the bridge immediately! And if any of you little shits followed even a single order Hux just gave you, hand in your resignation or I’ll let the Supreme Leader cut you in half himself!” 

“You’re funny,” I told him, trying unsuccessfully to giggle. 

“Try to lie still, ducky,” he replied, his brow wrinkled and his face very much not laughing. “And breathe, and don’t die, damn you.”

“I’m doin’ my best.”

“You better be.” I think there were almost tears in his eyes, but at that point I was losing the details of his face and my peripheral vision had gone dark. My breath was shallow, and whatever had buoyed me up before was draining fast. My hand slipped off of my torso and fumbled to the ground. “Maker!” exclaimed the Lieutenant when he saw my wound.

“Huh,” I replied, head lolling just a little.

“Hey, stay with me!” he insisted, squeezing my shoulder. 

“Thanks Duff,” I murmured faintly. “For being my friend.”

“You’d better thank me when you wake up in medical,” he retorted, and I could tell he was actually crying, which made me feel kinda bad. I didn’t mean to make him sad, after all. Then my mind wandered almost of its own volition to the reason I’d been here in the first place. I felt a tear trickle down my temple on either side, and gripped Mitaka's arm with my hand with as much strength as I had, which I'm sure wasn't much.

“Tell Kylo I love him. All of him.” 

“Tell him yourself,” came a different voice, and Mitaka glanced up and his eyes widened. I heard footsteps, and saw his face disappear. It was replaced by a familiar pair of brown eyes, a lovely proud nose, and a soft mouth drawn tight into a serious expression. I tried to smile.

“Hey,” I sighed. 

“Hey, wobbles,” he said, sweetness strained with desperate fear, trying to smile at me. _Matt._ His hand came up to touch my face, and it felt much too hot, but I didn’t care. 

“Not my best day ever,” I mumbled. He let out a tiny, pained laugh. My brain told my body to hold up my hand and push his lightsaber into his chest, and I was surprised when it complied. Hell I was surprised I still had a grip on the thing. “Found this. Thought you’d want it back.” He looked down, and his eyes got wide. Immediately his other hand clamped over mine, holding it and the saber there against him. When he looked back at me, there were tears in his eyes. “Don’t forget me. Or my ghost’ll fuck you up.” I smiled at him again, my eyelids fluttering.

“Aeon, please,” he whispered. “Please don’t go.”

“I love you. All of you.” Now I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and they slid shut. His hand shook against my face, but it was so far away.

Just barely, I felt something push down against my stomach, and felt the strangest feeling, like he was pouring something into me. But then, everything went dark. 

\-----

To my surprise, I woke up standing in a strange, lush, beautiful forest. I looked around, profoundly confused, and my eyes landed on Carrie Fisher. 

_ Wait. Carrie Fisher? _

“Aeon,” came her voice, gentle and motherly. “It’s so good to finally meet you.” My brow furrowed, and I glanced around again. 

“What’s happening?” I asked her sincerely, and she laughed. 

“Luke brought you here,” she replied. _Wait. Wait wait wait. Am I like, not dead? Or at my parents’ house? Orr?_

“Hey kid,” said Luke as he approached from behind me, smiling. “My sister wanted to meet you, and I figured this might be the best opportunity until we find out how this thing’s gonna go.” I blinked at him.

“Oh.” I looked back at the woman in front of me. “Leia!”

“That’s me,” she replied, smiling. “Luke’s been telling me all about you and what you’re doing for my son. Thank you.” I felt my heart start to race, exhilarated as I realized this was really her. To be fair, I think a part of me was still thinking about Carrie. Back home, she had been one of the very few celebrities I really wanted to meet and thank for changing my life. All her work and honesty about being bipolar had gotten me through some nasty shit. And her unexpected death had been one of the only celebrity deaths that ever hit me like I’d lost a family member or a friend. I immediately got weepy.

“Yeah, well, you know,” I stammered, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and sniffling. “Anytime, really.” 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Luke said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You’re not actually dead, you know that right?”

“It’s not that,” I mumbled. “I’m just… sorry. I’m just emotional.” I was not about to explain the horrible and sudden loss of my Bipolar Space Mom to these two. There was no way it would make any sense.

“Well, that’s okay. You’ve been through a lot,” he assured me before he walked towards his sister. I looked back up at them.

“I’m trying so hard, Ms. Organa--”

“Seriously? Just call me Leia,” she chuckled. “Hell, you can call me Mom, at this point. I’m adopting you whether Ben likes it or not.” Now I laughed, but her statement only pulled more tears out of my eyes. 

“We’re not married, y’all,” I sniffed, rolling my eyes but only because of Luke's previous wedding joke.

“Doesn’t matter. You can come over anytime, when all this blows over.” 

“Thanks.” _I can come over anytime..._

“How is he?” she asked, brow furrowing with concern that was not at all hidden by her sad smile. 

“I… I don’t know. I think he’s getting better. I’m afraid he’s just trying for me, though, and doesn’t believe he deserves any of it. But Kylo’s talking to me, finally, and Ben… I think Ben might be starting to grow up?” She nodded, listening intently, and I saw tears in her eyes. And hope.

“What about Matt? Is he okay?”

“He’s so afraid,” I replied quietly. “They all are. But Matt’s been hiding from his guilt for a really long time. He’s scared to go near it, and I think it makes him angry. Kylo’s literally opened up so much faster than Matt has, and I only just realized it, because he’s so sweet all the time.”

“That sounds like him,” she murmured. “Thank you, by the way. I always tried to understand his thing-- you called it identity dissociation, or something, right?”

“Basically.”

“It’s shed a lot of light on things from when he was a kid. We just didn’t get it, I don’t think. Which means we probably weren’t helpful.” She shook her head. “But you’ve really made it a lot clearer how it works. I just hope it hasn’t been too painful for you, dealing with all this.”

“It’s okay,” I said, shrugging a little. “I mean it’s been kinda fucked up, but it’s also been…” I couldn’t help but think of how stupid hard I’d fallen for both Matt and Kylo, and how much they’d both accepted my symptoms without really even batting an eyelash. Nevermind how I was like, using the fucking Force and fighting with a lightsaber and shit. You know, the little things. “It might be the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.” Now Luke was smiling, like he felt really relieved to hear he hadn’t actually ruined my life. 

“Well,” Leia said, smile returning to her face. “I’m happy you feel that way. It’s certainly the best thing that’s happened to us in a while.” That just made me teary again.

“I hope it stays that way,” I murmured.

“We have faith in you, kiddo,” Luke said, beaming. “And you know we’ll do everything we can to help you.” I nodded.

“Take care of yourself, and him,” Leia implored me. “In that order.” She smirked, like she knew a thing or two about neglecting your own well-being in favor of trying to fix someone else’s and how that was a huge fucking mistake. I got the feeling I was about to leave.

“Wait,” I said, looking at her. “Can… can I have a hug before I go back?” Her face softened, and she wordlessly held out her arms. My bottom lip crumpled and I ran into them, throwing my arms around her neck and crying. Maybe it’s stupid, but I felt I was getting the hug from Carrie I’d always wanted, in a strange way. She held me tight for a moment, before I pulled back. 

“Bye, Space Mom,” I sniffled. 

“May the Force be with you,” she said, putting her hand on my face and wiping away a tear. “Always.” 

She smiled, and then I was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> space mom.... T__T 
> 
> i had to give Aeon their moment with Leia, because Carrie really was a huge deal for me and losing her really ripped me out of the frame. i ugly cried in public at the theater after i saw Rogue One about it. which is NOT my thing. so yeah. i hope y'all enjoyed this INCREDIBLY rapid plot development... :3


	60. Chapter 60

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a whole lot of fucking happens really fast...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have surmised that there's plenty of smut in this chapter. that is correct.

I woke up in the medical bay again. The light was so bright that it took me a second to even want to fully open my eyes, but I pushed through it. I felt like a sack of water, or a blob of boneless jello. Blearily, I looked around the alcove I was in, even though I couldn't quite focus on or really see anything yet but white and patches of shadow. 

“Hey, little one.” One of the patches of shadow slowly congealed into Kylo, sitting by my bed looking weary and profoundly relieved. He was smiling so sincerely.

“Hey,” I replied weakly, reaching out a hand towards him. He took it in both of his as he rolled up right next to me on the little chair. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked sweetly. I felt a pang in my heart as the emotions from my little Force-dream meeting with Leia came back to me.

“Been better, but not bad, actually,” I murmured, smiling anyway. “Is Matt okay?”

“I think he’s very tired,” Kylo replied. “He saved your life.” 

“I know. I dunno how, though.”

“By using the Force for the first time in a long time.” He smiled at me. “I always thought healing was some big Jedi secret. But he figured it out.” 

“Wow,” I said, stunned. “He Force-healed me? That’s crazy.”

“I’m so proud of him,” Kylo said fondly. “And you.”

“Why me?” I groaned. “I got bodied by Rey super hard. She’s a badass.” He just laughed. 

“She’s powerful, yes. But you took her on, and she only landed the one strike while you were using an unfamiliar weapon. How’d you find Matt’s saber?” he asked.

“Ben showed me where it was, and she knocked mine outta my hand so I improvised. Also, she got away with the knife.” I didn’t bother to add that I’d told her to go, which was all I could do at that point to make sure she escaped.

“I’m not worried about it,” he replied, stroking my face. “We’re tracking the _ Falcon, _ so we’ll have the Wayfinder one way or another.”

“What if she gets it first, though?” I pointed out.

“Together we’ll get it, from her or not.” This was the first time his trust in me had made me nervous. 

“Did it ever occur to you that y‘all... might have the same goal?” I asked tentatively. 

“Even if we did, she’d be too busy trying to kill me for me to point that out,” he replied flatly. “She hates me.”

“Kylo,” I groaned. “She thought that saber was like, I dunno, yours from a long time ago or something. She asked me if it was Ben Solo’s. She doesn’t know about the DID thing, or doesn’t understand it, and she got so fuckin’ mad at me when she thought I was using something of yours that was all pure and light-sided and shit. She’s got the wrong idea, but I don’t think she’s completely given up on saving you.” He looked at me, clearly uneasy. 

“Are you suggesting I lie to her about being on her side?” he asked. For once, the slightly angry look on his face didn’t make me anxious. It just made me sad. He still didn’t think he was worthy of any return to his family.

“I’m just suggesting that maybe it’s stupid that there are even sides in the first place. The light and the dark are always gonna be there, ain’t they? Everybody who ever uses the Force is gonna have the choice to use either, or both, right?” I looked pointedly at him, and he regarded me with a strange expression. I softened as he did so, realizing that he wasn’t even a little bristly anymore. He looked like I’d pulled a veil off his eyes, but in a stern Kylo-ish sorta way. I pulled his hand up to my face and pressed it to my cheek. He rubbed a finger against it gently.

“I have truly found an amazing apprentice,” he said softly. I blushed a little. The concept that picking a side made no sense was far from unique, although it was a really natural conclusion for me, but his praise still made me feel proud of myself. “Sometimes I think really you’re the one who’s the master.” I raised an eyebrow suggestively at him, smirking a little.

“Is that why you like reminding me I’m not so much?” I teased.

“That’s only part of the reason,” he purred, smirking back at me more playfully than usual. He moved his hand to run a finger over my lips. “Don’t tempt me. You should rest, little one.” 

“But you make me feel so _ restored,_” I protested. He stood up from his chair and bent down to hold my chin still with his big hand and place a kiss on my mouth, dipping his tongue in just once. Despite my nearly gelatinous state, my thighs shivered. _ Fuck. _

“Later,” he growled, smiling a soft and ever so promising smile at me. I stared up at him, hoping I looked half as bratty as I felt. He withdrew his hand and stood up fully. 

“Supreme Leader,” came a familiar mechanical sound, and Lucky was ambling over to the alcove. “Is the Imminent Apprentice awake?” 

“Yes,” he replied, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What’s their medical status?” 

“I will check right away, sir,” the droid replied, leaning over the terminal behind me. “It appears Aeon is stable and requires only a mild muscle stimulant to return to normal or even robust levels of activity.” The tinny little robotic voice was almost surprised at my apparent progress. It spun around, already equipped with some little injection thing in its hand. “Shall I administer it now, sir?”

“_Robust _ levels of activity, huh?” Kylo asked, raising a brow and looking at me slyly. My body started to clench with anticipation. “I would always prefer my apprentice to be ready for anything.”

“Very well, sir.” Lucky pressed the little gadget into my arm, much like it had with the pain medication from after my little torture session with Hux. This time, it felt like my bones were restored, like all my muscles had something to be attached to again. I inhaled deeply.

“Wow. That’s better.” I pushed my arms up and stretched a little. “Thanks, Lucky. You’re the best.” 

“It is hardly a competition, Imminent Apprentice, but I appreciate your positive assessment nonetheless,” it replied. I grinned, and turned to swing my legs off the hospital bed. “Please return if you notice anything unusual. Your recovery was much speedier than it should have been given your nearly fatal injury, so I would like to be apprised of any concerns,” it added. 

“Oh, absolutely,” I assured the droid cheerfully. But I had a feeling I had Matt to thank for that, and I wasn’t too worried. I felt my heart swell up just thinking about it. “So, where to, _ Master _ Ren?” I asked Kylo, with completely intentional emphasis on his favorite word. 

“Follow me,” he growled back, crooking a finger. I practically skipped after him. He led me to the meditation room, of all places. 

“Interesting choice,” I said as I walked inside. Then I realized we were above a planet that was covered in trails of faint lights, some city-planet or another. It was _ incredible. _ I gasped and flew to the window, pressing my hand to it. “Holy shit. Where are we?” 

“Nar Shaddaa,” he said in a low voice.

“Is the _ Falcon _ here?” I asked, curious.

“Yes. But they’re laying low, possibly to make repairs or reach contacts.” He was close behind me, his bare hand stroking the back of my neck. 

“You don’t want to go capture them?” I asked, confused. 

“No, unless something changes. The Wayfinder isn’t here, and as soon as they leave they’ll lead us right to it. Which they wouldn’t do half so easily if we tried to recapture them.” His mouth was next to my ear now, and I felt a pang of lust interrupt my thoughts. 

“H-how do you know it’s not here?” I murmured as his other hand slipped around my waist.

“This is Hutt space, and the Empire had no hold here. A Hutt would sell something that valuable as soon as it got ahold of it. Don’t you trust me, apprentice?” he purred into my neck. 

“I-- _ fuck._” One hand came up around my neck from behind, gently grasping below my jaw, and my breath hitched as my insides started to melt. I was no longer worried about it. 

“I want to mark you,” he growled. “Let everyone see who your master is.”

“Be my guest,” I breathed, and his mouth descended onto my neck, seeking until it found a spot that made me jump when he nipped it. He bit down, sucking hard against my flesh, and my nerves spasmed. He moved and did it again in another spot, then again on the other side, then pushed the sleeve of my tank top away and clamped his teeth over a place on my shoulder that made me yelp. Soothing the bite with his tongue, he then raised his head to press his lips into my ear. The hand around my waist slipped down between my legs, gently stroking where I was rapidly getting damp. 

“It’s exhilarating how wet for me you always are,” he cooed, breath hot, and I’m pretty sure I got that much wetter between that and his touch through the fabric. To be fair, though, it was actually a little astonishing how much our bodies always seemed to want each other, like was the Force energy we shared an aphrodisiac, or?

“You’re always hard for me,” I pointed out, pressing my ass back against my point. He ground his hips into me in return, tightening his grip on my neck. 

“How could I not be? Look at you,” he said, and he pushed me a little closer to the glass. “So strong and so beautiful and filthy and _ tight, _ and so very fierce. I want this entire planet to watch me fuck you.” _ God, how does he always know exactly what to say to do this to me? _ I strained to breathe against his half-choke, making sure I was still pushing back into him as much as he was pushing forward into me. His fingers between my legs got a little faster, a little firmer, and I wheezed as I tried to swear. “I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing his hold on my throat. “What was that?”

“Fuck,” I gasped. “Shit!”

“Such a filthy mouth,” he tutted as he moved his hand to push two fingers into the mouth in question and stroke the inside of my cheek. “How I love to teach you to talk pretty when I fuck you. To show your gratitude.” His ministrations to my crotch never slowed, and my skin was starting to crackle with the mounting electricity. “Because I know you love to cum on my cock, don’t you little one?”

“Yeth,” I tried to say around his fingers. 

“Do you love it in your throat, too?”

“Yeth!” With that answer, he stopped touching me and simply pushed me to my knees firmly, still facing away from him and towards the planet outside. Putting his fingers under my chin, he tilted my head back to look up at his face. His other hand was already undoing his trousers. 

“Open,” he ordered, and I complied as his beautiful cock sprang out and hovered by my face. He pushed my head back farther, then pushed himself into my throat from behind me. I stroked him with my tongue, but didn’t get in much of that before he pushed to the very back of my throat-- which, at that angle, was much less gag-inducing than usual. He stared as he watched my neck bulge with his impressive length, and began to rut into it. “Oh, fuck,” he growled. “Yes, such a good little apprentice you can be.” I wanted to retort, but obviously that was impossible. He kept up his thrusts for a moment, then pulled out and tapped his spit-covered length on my cheek. Lust sang through me. 

“Kylo, let me worship your cock,” I said. His eyes flared with obvious desire, but he held me under my chin firmly.

“Whose cock do you want to worship?” 

“My _ master’s _ cock,” I cooed, sticking out my tongue and running it along him. I was kinda into the idea of getting him really hot and bothered by my praise and submission, forgetful as I always was about the rules. He released my face, and I spun around on my knees to bury my mouth in the place where his cock met his body and suckle at the skin there. He hissed, hands resting on my head. I reached up to fondle his sack while I ran my tongue up along him to the tip. Then I puckered my lips over his head, running them up and down in lewd little micro-strokes. His face was turning red, slack-jawed as he watched.

“Maker, you’re obscene,” he breathed. “Fuck, I love your dirty little mouth.”

“Mhm,” I agreed as I wound my tongue around him and took the base of him in my hand to squeeze it just a little. The hushed little snarls he let out were exactly what I wanted. I let my spit ooze down onto his head, then ran it down his length with my hand. “But my master’s cock is so beautiful, I can’t help it.” 

“_Fuck._” He was spellbound as I looked up at him and took him fully into my mouth again, moving slowly up and down, letting my lips pout lavishly against him. Panting, he ran his fingers down my face until they were under either side of my chin, guiding the bobbing of my head. “You look so pretty with my cock in your mouth,” he crooned. I sucked in my cheeks, and he groaned. “Ugh, what a good little apprentice I have. What else do you want, little one?” he asked, but he let my head bob a couple more times before he pulled himself out of my mouth so I could answer.

“I want to ride your beautiful cock, sir.” I stared, watching his face contort with lust. He took my face in his hands, wiped a trail of spit from my chin with his thumb before he tugged me up to standing and bent his head down close to me.

“You’ve earned it,” he purred, and kissed me fervently. I moaned as our tongues swirled around each other, as he probed my mouth with his and suckled on my lower lip. His hands snaked down my body to tug at my pants, letting them fall to the floor. He reached between my ass cheeks and ran his fingers through the massive slick between my thighs, growling into me. “And you’re always _ so _ ready,” he added, barely parting our lips to do so. I reached for his trousers and started tugging them down, and as they fell I reached up and opened his jacket by tugging down the zipper. I couldn’t help but run my hands over his chest, feeling the muscles there. He pulled me suddenly down to the floor, and I plucked one of the pillows up from nearby and slipped it behind his head as I perched on top of him, his length standing to attention up against my ass. “What’s come over my little one, being so good today?” he mused, and I could see the adoration in his fiery eyes. His huge hands ran up my torso, resting over my chest for a moment. I smiled slyly down at him.

“Oh, I can be good, when I want to be,” I assured him in a low voice. “And I very much want to be good to my master, today.” 

“Lucky me,” he replied, thumbing my nipples gently and making me giggle with excitement and a sparkle in my nerves. Then one hand glided up over my collarbone, gently touching the tender spots he’d created earlier. “I marked such a perfect creature.” Now I had butterflies again, and I was thinking about how sometimes it might be nice to not be such a belligerent brat. Though, I fully intended to do that again, too. His hands returned to my hips, one reaching behind me to grasp himself. “Up,” he commanded. Obediently, I rose up on my knees and let him guide his head to my entrance. In one smooth, unhurried movement, I sank down onto his cock.

“Oooh _ fuck,_” I groaned. He smirked at me and pushed his hips up a little to watch me gasp. I started to grind against him, and he growled. I leaned back, my hands on his heart-stopping quads, letting him watch as I sheathed and unsheathed his cock, feeling my guts starting to tighten. 

“Good little thing,” he said, hands on my thighs creeping up closer to my hips. “Fuck, yes, that’s it.” A thumb landed on my clit, and I moaned loudly.

“Oh yes, please sir, _ please _ touch me there!” 

“You like that?”

“Yes sir!” My hips started to pick up speed, bringing a rocking motion into my movements, and I felt his cock pushing up against my g-spot while he rubbed me. “Oh, _ yes! _ Fuck, sir, it feels so good!” I could tell I was approaching the edge.

“Ask me before you cum,” he growled. “Like a good little apprentice.” My eyes started to sparkle, my nerves to catch fire.

“Can I cum now please sir?”

“No. Hold it.”

“O-okay,” I whimpered, staring down at him with desperate eyes while my orgasm started to build up behind the wall of my willpower. His thumb increased its speed, flying roughly over my bud, and I wanted to scream. “_Please, _ sir! Can I cum now?”

“Alright,” he relented, and I went stiff as my nerves exploded and I clenched around him. “Yes, good little thing, cum for me!” His thumb never stopped, pushing wave after wave of electricity through me, and I let out a series of noises as I shook. When I started to drift down, Kylo’s hands closed around my waist and tugged my torso down towards him, one arm clamping over me as he started to rut up into me. 

“Shit!” I yelped, and I felt his other hand gripping my ass cheek. 

“You love this-- don’t you?” he growled into my ear as he fucked me. “Love-- rrrgh-- this cock-- filling you up?”

“Yes, sir!” 

“Would you-- like to be filled-- argh-- even _ more, _ little one? As a reward-- shit-- for being-- so good?” My eyes widened as he circled a damp finger around my asshole.

“Yes, please, sir!” Already he was pushing the tip of one finger inside me, and I felt pleasure radiating through my whole body. 

“So good,” he purred, sliding it in fully. I moaned again, legs starting to shake. “So filthy.”

“Can I have more please, sir?”

“Yes, you may.” Another finger slid in, and as his cock slammed up into me, I felt myself start to turn into jello. The fullness and the battering of my already electrified nerves started to spin me towards another climax. His fingers worked me with building intensity, hitting spots I’d forgotten I had. But I wanted something more, all of a sudden.

“Kylo, I want your cock in my ass,” I murmured into his ear. His hips stopped, and I heard his breath come in hard. I knew he wanted it as much as I did, and I kinda wanted to impress him, I won’t lie.

“Whose cock do you want in your ass, little one?” he demanded quietly, huskily.

“I want my master’s _ beautiful _ cock in my ass, _ please_.” I felt his nose rub up against my head, my ear, and his fingers swirled around inside me. I whimpered.

“Anything for such a good little apprentice.” His fingers withdrew and he pulled out of me, and I sat upright on him, feeling his cock twitch up against the small of my back. _ Shit. _ Suddenly I was nervous about just how fucking _ big _ it was. I looked down at him, staring up at me with ravenous desire. 

“Help me take all of you, sir,” I pleaded breathily. His black eyes flashed, and he brought his hand around to hover just below my chin, palm up. 

“Spit,” he commanded, and I complied. As he reached back around to rub that slickness on himself, he took my face in his other hand. “Tell me if it hurts, little one.” I nodded, and stood up onto my knees again, taking a deep breath. Gently, I eased down to press the head of his cock up against the puckered entrance of my ass, and kept pushing. When it started to open me up, his head was so broad that my breath hitched. But his wet fingers eased around my opening, stroking gently, which soothed me. His eyes held mine intently as I sank a little further, and he opened me even wider.

“Ah!” I squeaked, stopping again. “Fuck, it’s so big...” His free hand moved to softly stroke my clit with his fingertips, and warmth blossomed out over me again, my muscles starting to relax.

“Easy, little one, don’t hurry,” he cooed sweetly, and his voice made me feel so incredibly safe and taken care of. I gasped as I sank down a little more; the sensation of it was almost overwhelming, but it wasn’t painful as long as I was slow and remembered to breathe. I saw him stifle a grunt, his nostrils flaring. “There you go. I’ve got you.”

“_Kylo,_” I mewled as I finally slid gently down to the base of his cock, shuddering with the intensity of the pressure and biting my lip. His fingers on my clit stuttered as he let out a long, low growl, but they didn’t stop. The other hand clamped down on my hip, gripping me tightly as he took in the sensation himself. 

“Fuck, Aeon,” he said. “Your ass feels _ incredible._”

“I’m so full, Kylo.” I felt my legs already shaking as I leaned forward, bracing myself with my hands on his chest for a minute.

“Does it feel good?”

“_Yes,_” I whimpered. 

“Are you ready for me to fuck you?”

“Please,” I said softly, “please fuck me slow, okay?”

“Of course,” he murmured, pulling one of my hands up to his face and kissing it gently. His eyes never left mine as he started to move his hips. I gasped loudly, eyelids fluttering as a huge wave of pleasure rolled over me. He continued at that achingly slow, careful pace, fingers still on my clit. 

“Oh my _ God._” I was starting to get used to the motion, realizing that my body was pooling with warmth and excitement just like it did when he fucked me the other way. “Holy shit, it’s-- aah-- it’s _ so _ good!”

“Are you grateful, little one?” he purred. 

“God _ yes, _ thank you for filling me up, sir!” His speed slowly increased, making me shudder on top of him. 

“I can fill you up more, if you like. Since you’ve been so good today.”

“Ohmigod_,_” I mewled. “Yes, please!” His hand that was at my clit slipped down to the opening of my cunt, swirling around it.

“You’re so wet from getting fucked in the ass, apprentice,” he growled. “You love it that much?”

“_Yeee-ee-e-e-es,_" I moaned pitifully. “I do, I love your cock inside me!”

“Whose cock?”

“My master’s cock!” 

“There you go, good little thing.” He plunged two fingers inside my cunt then, and I saw stars. 

“Holy fucking _ shit,_” I breathed, gasping for air as he rubbed them mercilessly against my g-spot. His hips started to take on a more familiar pace, a rhythmic slapping that his hand worked in time with. “Fuck! It’s amazing, sir!”

“More?” he asked between panting, staring up at me.

“Yes please sir!” A third finger slid inside, and his palm was against my clit, and _ holy shit I have never felt like this in my life-- _

“Remember,” he growled, “You have to ask me-- before-- you can cum.”

“FUCK! Y-yessir!” I was definitely getting close, with the amount of sensations that were wracking my body at that moment, my heart pounding as I made pathetic little noises that ululated with his rhythm. Tears pooled in my eyes, and now every part of my body was shaking, not just my legs.

“You’re so good-- you _deserve--_ fuck-- to be filled up-- like this-- my precious little-- _filthy_ thing-- rrgh-- look-- _argh!--_ look at you-- so full of me-- you might _weep--_” Now he was fucking me with gusto, hand working at me intently, fericiously, and my eyes rolled back as my body tried to go limp. 

“FUUUCK, SIR! CAN I CUM PLEASE?” I shouted desperately, unable to contain all the sounds he was driving out of me.

“Not yet!” he barked. “Hold it!”

“PLEEEE-EE-EASE!” I begged at the top of my voice, uncertain if I could actually hold this one in as it ballooned through my body and pressed against every part of me, demanding its release.

“I want you-- shit!-- to hold it-- until-- you cum--_ aaargh!-- _ so beautifully--”

“PLEASE MASTER REN! I _ NEED _ TO!”

“You _ need _ to?”

“YESSIR!”

“What do you need?” His eyes flashed, his other hand reached up to hold me by the neck under my chin but didn’t cut off my air. That sent a whole new thrill through me, being held and filled and fucked like a ragdoll, and I let out a loud, ragged whimper. “I said-- WHAT-- do you need?”

“I NEED MY MASTER TO LET ME CUM!”

“_Why?_”

“BECAUSE HE FUCKS ME SO _ GOOD _ WITH HIS BIG BEAUTIFUL COCK!!”

“Cum for me, little one,” he finally said, and instantly my body complied, sending pleasure screaming through me. At first I was silent, going totally stiff, but as he kept moving my voice broke out into a wail and I heard the wet sounds of my cum all over his hand and his stomach, dripping down my legs. “Look at you!-- _ fuck!-- _ Coming everywhere-- just for me!” he snarled, and I clamped down hard onto him as another wave of it crashed, and another stream exited my body. “Cum-- shit-- while I fill-- this perfect! Little! Cunt! And this Tight! Little! Ass! _ Fuck--_” 

Finally he came, and his hips became savage and erratic, knocking one more full-body shudder through me until we both expired. I collapsed forward onto his chest, and his hands laid on my back as we gasped in unison. Lying there, I turned my head to look hazily out the window at the trails of city lights below. 

I vaguely remembered the point of being there, and I wondered if it really would be as easy as Kylo said it would be to just… follow them out again. Somehow I doubted it, even though at least we weren’t on a massive time crunch like they’d been in _ Episode VIII. _ That would’ve been a huge pain in the ass. It would also give them more time to plan something very not-desperate. I decided that I didn’t want to think about it anymore, and hoped I might end up feeling the Force telling me what was up if I needed to. I ran my hands over Kylo’s muscled arm over the fabric of his open jacket, sighing. 

“I admit,” he murmured, “your willing submission is even more delicious than I always thought it would be.” I grinned, and nuzzled his chest with my nose.

“Prolly ‘cuz it’s so rare,” I replied, looking up at him. His eyes were heavy-lidded, face still ruddy, an incredibly pleasant little smile on his face. It was equal parts lustful and fond.

“Just like the rest of you.” He stroked my head with his hand. My stomach fluttered.

“You’re far from garden variety yourself, yanno.”

“You’re sweet.” 

“I mean it.”

“I know you do, little one,” he said quietly, seeming touched by my sincere flattery, even if it was unclear if he believed it or not. I smiled at him. “Do you want to see Matt when he’s active again?” he asked. “I think he’s recovering, I felt a little push a moment ago. I know he’ll want to see you, too.”

“Yes!” I replied, my heart filling up with joy. _ My angel! _ I’d missed him recently, with all the drama going on with Kylo. And all the sex. And all the sexual drama. Oof.

“I thought you might.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Let’s go back upstairs, he’ll feel much better coming up front in our room.”

_ Our room. _ Did he mean his system’s room, or was he like… including me? I banished the question from my mind.

“Okay.” I slid off him and gathered my pants and straightened my rumpled tank top, which had never made its way off. I chucked his pants at him, grinning; he caught them and pulled them on, closed his jacket. When he rose, he reached over to touch my face and gaze into my eyes for a moment. Apparently Kylo Ren was an endless fountain of sweetness, once you got to know him. I still swooned when he was like that out of thin air, unprompted. Then I realized something, and stifled a giggle.

“What?” he asked.

“Does everybody know we’re fucking, now?” I asked. 

“Probably.” He just smirked faintly, seeming totally unbothered. “Because you screamed it at the top of your lungs in the hangar bay, and I don’t think the glass is soundproof on Corellian freighters.” I turned red, but rolled my eyes and grinned at the same time. 

“I was under duress,” I reminded him.

“Oh,” he purred, “I know.” He took my hand. “Let’s go, hm?” I just nodded, staring at him with captivation plain on my face, and we exited the meditation room together.

When we arrived in his quarters, he elected to tug me right into the bathroom with him. 

“You tryna clean up?” I asked as he pulled his jacket off. 

“Just quickly. And let’s dye Matt’s hair for him, it’ll be a little surprise,” he said, grinning. “Fast, though, because I don’t know when he’ll show up.” _ Oh my God, that’s so cute. _ I giggled and stripped before wandering with him into the shower. We were quick, and I ran the temporary blonde rinse through his hair delightedly, and he just smiled softly at me the whole time. _ Fuck, I’m so in love. _

As he was drying his hair off, and I was drying myself off, I saw him look up at me. His expression was changed, puzzled; and then his eyes got wide. 

“Aeon!” he exclaimed, his whole face lighting up, and I laughed and ran towards him. He scooped me up in his arms and spun me around, and I felt like I might catapult into the stars. 

“Matt!” I held tight to him as he put my feet back on the floor. “Oh, Matt, you healed me! You’re incredible!”

“I… I did it,” he stammered, staring down at me like he was surprised with himself. “I had no idea if it would work.” 

“I’m so glad you tried anyway,” I giggled. He smiled and planted a kiss on my head. 

“Me too.” He grinned, and ran his hands down my back like he was trying to memorize my skin. “I just followed that feeling I always have when you’re in trouble.” I blinked, and I realized that the connection that I had pretty much all the time with Kylo, the feeling that the Force was flowing in a closed circuit between us… was happening right now, with Matt. My solar plexus was tingling, my heart beating a little faster with the sheer vitality of it. I beamed up at his sweet, slightly goofy smile. 

“Can you feel that?” I whispered. He gazed down into my eyes and I saw recognition come over them.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, Maker. I… I haven’t…”

“It’s okay, Mattau,” I cooed. “You don’t have to be afraid.” I saw his face contort as he fought off his mild panic, take a couple deep breaths, tug me a little closer to him. “Let’s go lie down,” I suggested. “We should talk, right?”

“Yes,” he murmured, and we retreated to the bed. Once cozy, I laid there facing him and held both of his huge hands. “Was it your idea to dye my hair, by the way?” he asked.

“It was Kylo’s” I giggled. “He’s so proud of you. I am too!” This seemed to strike him a lot more than I’d anticipated; his face fell into a look of quiet astonishment.

“He said that?” he whispered.

“Yes.” Those beautiful brown eyes floated up to meet mine, a little teary.

“He hasn’t said that since before…” He caught himself, looking guiltily up at me. I didn’t respond at first, just brought his hand up to kiss it gently. _ He’ll either tell me right now, or he won’t. _ He just sighed. “How’d you find my saber?”

“Ben showed me.”

“Ben?”

“Yep. I dunno why, I mean I dunno if he expected Rey to show up or what--”

“Rey?” He looked baffled. “Will you catch me up, please? All I know is I was suddenly in the body in the middle of the street somewhere on Kijimi, and you were in the ship and you were in big trouble. Then I came back and I found you.” 

“Alright, hang onto your hat, ‘cuz this is a helluva story…”

I gave him the rundown of Kylo’s hunt for Rey, leaving out the sex parts honestly because that just seemed rude even though I’m 100% sure he knew we had it and wasn’t bothered. Then I told of my discovery of the secret room; and then the story of Ben showing me that Rey was here, had snuck into the secret room by the little passageway I didn’t even know was there (that led out into the hallway, it turned out). And of course, how she caught me off-guard in a single split second and impaled me with her saber before running off. Once again, I left out Luke and the fact that I’d told her to go-- and yes I was still nervous about withholding these facts, but I didn’t think it was a good time to go there, yet. He listened attentively while I added the bit about Mitaka finding me, shooting Hux, and then calling for medical right before he’d shown up. 

“Wow. Mitaka is a great friend,” he commented. “He might get a medal for shooting Hux, too.”

“I might give it to him myself,” I laughed. 

“That’s so much, hun. And you woke up in the med bay, right? And Kylo was there?”

“Yeah, and Lucky is so confused that I healed up so fast. But I think that was your doing.” I smiled at him. He blushed. _ Okay, I was missing this adorableness. _

“I’m… I’m scared, I won’t lie,” he murmured. “But… I feel so connected to you, Aeon. Every time we touch…” He reached up to put his fingertips on my face, and I felt it. This teeny crackle of energy that moved through me, so familiar and yet different from Kylo’s. 

“I know,” I breathed. “I feel it too.” His fingers strayed down to my lips, running across them softly. 

“I thought I wanted to touch you before. Now… I’m not sure how I’ll stop.” My heart skipped a beat, and another familiar feeling rushed between my legs. Despite Kylo’s previous attentions, I was suddenly hungry to watch Matt’s face fill with pleasure, to feel the adoration of his tongue and his fingertips. 

“When I watched you in the mirror before…” I whispered through his fingers, and I saw his eyes brighten. “You’re so beautiful it makes me weak to think about it, watching you fuck me like that.”

“Maker,” he mumbled, and I felt his finger creep into my mouth as he ran it over the wet edge inside my lips. _ Shit. He’s really learning, huh? _I pressed my tongue against it, watched his eyes get darker. When he pushed it gently into my mouth, I moaned and wrapped my lips around it. “Will you touch me?” His words were electricity in my ears, and I looked up at him as I reached down to palm his cock as it began to stiffen. He stared at me while I suckled at his finger, rapt as always, and I felt myself start to liquefy. 

“What do you want to feel, Mattau?” I asked him in a gentle, husky voice as I pulled away from his hand. I wanted to give him every single good feeling there was.

“I want to feel you cum on my face,” he breathed. “I want to feel you wrapped around me. I want to feel you inside me.” _ Oh. That’s quite the fucking list. _

“Fuck,” I swore, gripping his length, watching his breath hitch. “Which do you want first, lovely thing?”

“Let me taste you,” he replied, hungrily pushing his face close to mine, hovering our lips close together. “You’re so sweet and perfect in my mouth.” _ Wow. WOW. Okay. Flattery will officially get you EVERYWHERE. _ I kept our faces close, but turned from my side onto my back. One of his huge hands spread itself across my shoulder, my chest, my belly, and he didn’t quite kiss me before he moved downward, which was amazingly tantalizing. He hoisted my legs up, kissing the backs of my thighs. I grabbed the sheets under me in anticipation. He was moving with an extra sense of urgency, and his every touch was charged. Holding my legs wide, he pushed them down to either side of my torso and buried his face.

“Ah!” I gasped, panting as he held me firmly and stroked up the length of my slit with his tongue over and over. He swirled it around inside my entrance, which made me shiver. 

“Fuck,” he murmured into me so lewdly it sent a pang through my body, barely moving his mouth away. “I love your cunt.”

“Jesus,” I breathed, eyes locked on him. He pushed my legs back even farther, until the front of my calves were on the bed and my ass was high in the air. He wrapped his powerful arms around my thighs, pressed his torso up against my back as his head leaned over to devour me. It was heart-stopping, watching his tongue push inside me and his head bob as he fucked me with it. I whimpered at the amazing combination of firm muscle and soft wetness pushing against my g-spot, “Fuck, Matt! You’re so hot!”

He just met my eyes, a mild frenzy in his black pupils before he pulled out and bent his face down further to wrap up my clit in his soft lips. I moaned as he suckled it, lapped at it, tugged it with his warm mouth from beneath its little hood and sent a lightning bolt through my very spine as he landed directly on the bundle of nerves that was already a little sensitive from my earlier exploits. Ecstatic whimpers bubbled up out of me, and he shook his blonde head rapidly to send the sensations careening in different directions through me. 

“I’m-- fuck! Oh my God!-- oooh my _ God, _ Matt-- I’m-- I’m gonna cum! I-I-I shit! I’m coming, I’m _ coming!!_” I announced, and he increased his pressure just enough to kick-start my orgasm ripping through me. My legs quivered under his powerful grip, and I went stiff and dug my fingers into the bedclothes before I gave a little howl. Heat radiated from his mouth, and he made long, gentle laps with his tongue over my clit which sent spasms through me as I slowly faded. I panted and sighed, and he released my legs to lean over and press his slick mouth into mine, dipping his tongue in as if to impress upon me how sweet he thought I tasted. 

“I felt it,” he murmured into my face. “I _ felt _ you cum.”

“Let me fuck you,” I replied, pushing against him until he rolled over and I could climb atop him and kiss his chest.

“I like your necklace,” he said, smirking and blushing as he looked at the marks on my neck. I felt myself flush, and then get even more turned on that apparently Matt thought his alter’s bruises on me were hot. I just sank my mouth onto his nipple instead of replying, which he didn’t seem to mind as he hissed through his teeth. 

I made my way down to his now fully hardened cock, and I was more than happy to be laving my tongue down its length again, for him this time. He groaned while I suckled at the skin under the head of it, and gently pressed my fingers against his opening. I spat into my hand and ran it around that sensitive area, and then decided _ fuck it _ and pushed his ass upwards to press my face into it. My tongue landed and I heard him gasp as I swirled it around, taking in the sharp taste and musky smell. He spread himself wide, pulling his cheeks apart to make room for me as I pushed my tongue little by little inside him. 

“Aeon!” he whimpered. “Maker, it feels so good!” 

“Mm,” I hummed, glancing up at his face as it withered with the sensations. He eased open quickly, and I lapped in and out of him just to hear the amazing sounds he made. _ Fuck, I love fucking him, he’s so big and strong and he just falls apart! _ I withdrew to stick a finger in my own mouth, lathered it in spit before I pushed it into his ass and crooked it gently against the little pleasure spot within. 

“Shit!” he groaned, and I wasted no time thrusting into him. “Fucking--!”

“You are such a dirty thing, who would’ve thought?” I cooed as he whimpered. “So sweet and so precious until you get fucked, and then you’re just filthy. I love that about you.”

“Please, _ please _ give me more,” he whined.

“You want more?” 

“Yes! Please!” 

“Alright.” I pushed a second finger in obligingly, and felt his legs shake. “How’s this, pet?” 

“Fuuuuck,” he replied. 

“What’s that?”

“It feels amazing!”

“You like it when I fuck you?”

“I _ love _ it when you fuck me!” I grinned and took his cock in my other hand, stroking it in time with my fingers, drawing a series of pleasured sounds from his gorgeous chest out of his plush mouth.

“And this? You like that too?”

“Maker, yes!” He was panting heavily, eyelids fluttering. I kept my pace consistent, firm, but not too fast. I dribbled a little spit onto his cock, slicking it over the sensitive spot under the head and then rubbing that place exclusively. He mewled and I saw his eyes roll. _ Fuck, okay, I get why people are into eyerolling. _

“Do you want to cum like this?” I asked.

“I-- I want-- I wanna cum inside you.” 

“That’s why I asked,” I said gently, but I gave him a few more thrusts before I withdrew. He sucked in air and laid there for a moment, looking almost dizzy. I crawled up beside him, stroking his blonde hair. “I do love making you cum, though. It’s quite a thing to watch.” He just stared up at me, starstruck, before he took my face in his hands and kissed me again, his assertive tongue making me whimper just a little. 

“Turn on your other side,” he said quietly, and I slid around to nestle up with my ass pressed against his twitching cock. He turned a little more and planted his lips on my shoulder, nipping it a little. I leaned my head back against him, sighing as I felt his hand guiding himself between my cheeks to the opening of my cunt which was hot and slick and very much ready.

“Fuck,” I breathed as he pushed it inside me, and I heard him growl into my flesh. His ruts began immediately, but they were paced a little slower and more even than I’d expected with his intense arousal. The sensation of his girth rippled up through me with new levels of energy, new depths of intensity, and I shuddered and moaned. 

“I love this,” he husked into my ear, heat pooling in my belly. “I love everything about you-- how you talk-- how you sound-- how you feel.”

“_Matt,_” I whined as the pressure built inside me. His hand came around my leg and positioned it up and away, slipping beneath it to stroke my red, swollen clit. “FUCK! Ohmigod!”

“It feels so good, Aeon,” he said. “I feel you-- so much-- I feel you _ everywhere._”

“Aaa-a-ah,” I replied, legs starting to tremble as I arched my back and he drove his cock faster into me. The heat and friction and intensity were escalating rapidly, crackling through me and through him and back around to me. He was right, the feeling of our connection was everywhere, surrounding us, and I glanced around to realize dully that several things in the room were actually _ floating _ in midair. Yes, really! My eyes started to sparkle as the edge approached, watching a lamp and our clothes and our towels and my boots hovering lazily around the bed. His hand on my clit started to rub furiously, to press harder. “Christ, Matt, please! _ Please _ don’t stop!”

“I never wanna stop,” he cooed, his breaths coming harder and harder. “I would-- watch you cum-- for hours.”

“Fuuuck,” I groaned, the idea throwing fuel on my mounting orgasm.

“_Shit,_” he cursed. “Will you cum for me, fierce one?”

“_Yes, _ please-- don’t-- stop--”

It burst out of me this time, like I was being lifted up into the air too as I felt myself get suddenly still and heard the wet sound of my climax. I clenched tight around him, and I felt him start to stutter and jerk as my motions triggered his orgasm. It felt like meshing our energies together for a moment, like I was in fact one with him. It was like I could feel his beautiful, golden halo wrap around me as his hand fell away and instead he gripped me tight, nose pressed into my neck. In waves I started to feel myself descend, our bodies puddling together as my bleary eyes watched everything in the room slowly lower itself to whatever floor or table it had been on before. Panting, glowing, I wrapped my hand around his.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “That was… incredible.”

“Yeah, did you see all that shit floating?” he giggled into my neck. 

“Oh my God, I did. I thought I was just losing my mind. In a good way, for once.”

“Only if I am, too. Which could happen, I guess.” I smiled, my heart full of joy. 

“I love you so much,” I sighed. 

“I love you back, fierce little thing,” he murmured, nuzzling me.

“I wish we could stay here, but I got a feeling Kylo’s gonna need to keep apprised of this fuckin’ situation we’re apparently waiting out.” I sighed. Cuddling with Matt was the best.

“I know.” He squeezed me a little tighter. “It’s okay. I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so scared, when I thought I was losing you too.” That made me feel a pang of sadness, and I kissed his hand before I turned over to look at his sweet, lovely face. 

“I know the Force is scary. Believe me. I’m shocked I haven’t ended up in worse situations with it so far. But I’m with you, too. Always.” I touched his cheek, and he looked at me with an expression that was both worried and relieved. 

“I’m scared I’m gonna mess it up again,” he said in a very soft voice.

“It’s okay. I’m always scared of that, too,” I chuckled. “Like, all the fuckin’ time. Before I even got here. But I feel like this fear is worth conquering.”

His eyes filled with sadness and this faint, very timid hope. 

“I don’t know if you should believe in me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Try me,” I whispered. _ Nevermind that I do, in fact, know. That’s not important, right? _

“I--” He swallowed, shook his head. “You’d be right to hate me, Aeon.”

“Hate’s not a feeling I would ever really call ‘right,’ honestly.” I shrugged. “I mean, even if it’s technically warranted, it only leads to suffering. Pretty sure Yoda said that.” I was appalled at myself, quoting the prequels, but to be fair… not _ every _ single thing about them was bad. He still looked uncertain.

“I just-- I lose control sometimes. A long time ago, I lost it so completely it killed some people.” I just nodded, listening intently. “And Kylo had to clean up my mess. I don’t wanna do that again. Ever.” _ Okay, he’s half confessed, I guess? _

“The anger doesn’t go away just because you run from it, yanno,” I pointed out gently. “And I know it’s anger that explodes like that.” 

“How am I supposed to make sure it doesn’t happen again?” he asked, voice strained. 

“You learn to know when you’re angry before it just shows up and bitch-slaps you in face,” I laughed quietly. “You gotta accept your feelings, Matt. That’s the most important step. And, you keep good people with you. People who know you need help with that, who’ll forgive your mistakes.” I saw tears pooling in his eyes, his lip trembling.

“Nobody ever forgave me,” he sniffled. 

“Did you ever ask?” I stroked his face so softly and so tenderly, just then, and tried to pour my love into his body for a moment. It’s not like I didn’t know what it was like to just assume you fucked up so badly that you might as well fuck off, too, while you’re at it. To genuinely not feel like you deserved forgiveness, anyway. 

“I didn't think they would.”

“There’s only one way to find out, love.” His face crumpled, but he didn’t start to bawl. I felt his stoicism clamp down over him, felt him holding in his sadness just like I was so used to doing whenever I possibly could. I kissed his nose. “Don’t give up on yourself. I’ll never give up on you, and sooner or later it’s gonna get on your nerves.” He made a sound that was half laugh and half sob. 

“When you were in bed for three days that one time… that’s how I used to feel all the time, i-inside my head. When I just let Kylo pilot all the time. It--” _ sniff-- _ “took me so long to try and come out again,” he told me through his suppressed tears. Now my eyes watered, relating in my bones. 

“I’m sorry you felt that. I wish nobody did.” 

“Since you got here and I got out more, I’ve… I’ve felt it less.”

“Turns out talkin’ to people and doing stuff is pretty helpful, for that,” I told him with half a grin. “Makes you feel like a person, again.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. His face was less strained, his urge to weep fading. “I just thought I was a monster.” _ Oh shit. That word… that word came from him. _ I realized Kylo had only ever said that about himself the one time, as a joke. I wondered if it was him or Matt who had agreed with Rey when she called him that.

“You look like a person to me,” I cooed, taking his face in my hands and kissing it. He smiled.

“I’ll try, Aeon. I will.” 

“You’ve already done something amazing,” I reminded him. “You’re off to a great start.” For a moment I held him like that, feeling his hand tighten around my waist. Then I sighed, and the sense that I need to stop (literally) fucking around became more nagging than I wanted to ignore. “Okay. We gotta get up. I got a feeling some shit’s about to go down, don’t ask me how.”

“I felt it too,” he said, eyes lifting up towards me, much harder and brighter than they’d been seconds before. 

_ Kylo. _

“Ah, shit,” I said. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“It’s time to go, apprentice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i felt like we all deserved some excellent smut after what i just put y'all through in ch 59. so here's your NC-17 double-feature chapter <3
> 
> I LOVE Y'ALL I PROMISE I WON'T TORTURE YOU... much... okay yeah no like there's a lot more that happens and as you prolly can tell, i'm running along the same lines of the plot of RoS but there is much deviation. thank you ALL for reading and commenting and idk yelling at me when you're like alkjhfga;gjhaas;hjas because i mean, i deserve it, and i love it lol


	61. Chapter 61

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Into a wretched hive of scum and villainy we go!

The city-planet of Nar Shaddaa was gorgeous from a nice safe distance, but down on its surface I felt like I was on an endless roller coaster. In a bad way. 

Kylo was driving the speeder we’d just picked up as we landed, the kind with actual seats as opposed to a bike, and he was a little stony. I gripped the armrests with white knuckles as we careened through the air traffic, looking either at my lap or at him most of the time. The mild panic from being super unused to almost every form of travel that was standard in Star Wars, except city-sized mega-dreadnaughts, was kicking up some of my frustration with the situation.

“Remember that thing where you fuck me sometimes to avoid dealing with your problems?” I asked him, very rhetorically. “It’s not like I don’t appreciate it, but maybe we shouldn’t do that anymore, at least not while the Wayfinder is still the problem.”

“You’ve made your point, apprentice,” he said, which was Kylo-speak for _ I know you’re right for fuck’s sake now shut up because I feel like an idiot. _

“That’s a little outta character for you, Kylo,” I added, this time just letting myself sound worried. Because I was. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I was preoccupied with the fact that you didn’t die, which I very much thought you had.”

“That’s… incredibly sweet.” I blinked at him. “That the only reason?”

“No.” He scowled.

“Yeah, I can tell. What’s up?”

“I don’t know if you missed it, but I’m the reason you were almost dead, also.”

“I think you’re confused. Pretty sure Rey’s the one who almost killed me.” I furrowed my brow at him. His eyes remained locked on the windshield.

“I failed to stop her. Again.” He was starting to get angry, and that made me nervous being as he was driving us through an ungodly amount of other airborne vehicles and now he was doing it faster than before.

“It’s okay, Kylo, she’s clearly not just some nobody off the street. She’s pretty powerful.”

“She _ is _ a nobody!” he growled. “Why should she be so powerful? She’s literally from a junk heap on Jakku, Aeon. It makes no sense!”

“Yeah but you don’t even know where _ I’m _ from,” I pointed out. I saw him go stiff, his rising rage arrested. For a moment he was silent, and I glanced out the windshield at the dizzying spin of lights. _ Bad call, bad call, abort! _ Slamming my eyes shut, I turned my face back towards him before I peeked again. When he still had nothing to say, I decided to add my next thought to the pile. “My point is, you don’t care who she is. You care who she’s _ with. _”

His nostrils flared, hands gripping the steering levers tightly. But we didn’t speed up again, in fact we started to slow down as we approached the roof of some kind of complex, maybe ten stories high and brimming with activity. _ Ugh. Finally. _ He parked the thing with a little more aggression than necessary, and I groaned and glared out the window at the other speeders that were parked all around. The dimly lit entrance to the building was several yards away.

“I want you to follow me closely, apprentice. If she’s still here, and I believe she is, you and I will need to apprehend her together. There are also New Republic sympathizers here, just as there are First Order allies and renegades with no allegiance to anything but their own pockets. We may meet others who try to get in our way.”

“I assume we can pick up this conversation later, then?” I asked crisply. He glared at me.

“Come.” So I rolled my eyes and climbed out of the speeder. I was pretty sure he had been avoiding Rey, hoping he’d be able to skip any more confrontations with her and instead turn her into a human GPS for the Wayfinder. _ I mean, he’s just tired of feeling like she beats him every time. I can’t blame him. I just wish he wouldn’t be suck a fucking dingus about it. _

I followed Kylo, who was wearing his cloak for once and covering his head (which, by the way, his hair was still blonde for at least two more hours, and yes, it was slightly disorienting and I was pretty sure he hated it.) I was also covering my head with my hooded cowl and wearing my outerwear jacket for the first time since I’d gotten it, which woulda been cool except for the occasion. We slipped quietly through the insides of the complex. It was basically a space-mall, to be honest, but instead of department stores and escalators, it was full of shops and bars and little food stands and probably loads of very sketchy ‘businesses.’ I wanted to ask Kylo how he knew she was here exactly, but I figured I’d grill him about that later, too.

There were lots of people on Nar Shaddaa-- lots of aliens, I mean. Way more aliens than humans, and way more non-humanoid aliens than had even been on Kaller. I did my best not to stare at anyone as we passed. Finally, long after I felt like we were well and truly lost in the crowded building, we drew up to a shop that was full of parts. I had no idea what the parts were for, because the sign was definitely not in English. Inside there was an alien, who looked very much like a bird and lizard had a real unfortunate-looking baby. An Ishi Tib. I eyed it, glancing up at Kylo. 

“Pendewqell,” he said to the bird-lizard. It looked at him, and I saw its creepy eyes widen. Before it could move, Kylo thrust his arm out. The creature made a harsh squalling sound, reaching for its neck. _ Oh shit. Finally a Force choke is happening. _ It was less impressive than I’d expected, but maybe that’s because my favorite chokes from Kylo were physical ones. “Don’t struggle. I’m not here to kill you. I want to know where the _ Millennium Falcon _ is.” He dropped the choke long enough for the guy to wheeze and stare at him. 

Then it said something, but I had no fucking clue what, because it sounded like a series of squawks to me. 

“Don’t bullshit me, Dew. I know who you used to run with. I have a simple question that requires a simple answer. Where is the _ Falcon _?” Kylo’s eyes were flaring under his hood. 

More squawks. His fists clenched, and the creature went flying against the wall of parts behind it, a bunch of them getting knocked off and clanging to the ground (or off its head) in the process. It wailed.

“I grow tired of this, Dew. I didn’t come here to kill you, but I can.” I don’t know what spurred me to act, but…

“Maybe we can come to an agreement,” I piped up, and I saw Kylo’s head whip over to stare at me. I could feel the tendril of Force energy connecting me to the Ishi Tib as it clambered back to its feet. I tugged it gently. “What can we offer you?” 

“Aeon--” 

_ I want that ship, _ came Pendewqell’s words, and this time despite the squawks I knew what it meant. The Force can be cool like that, apparently. Kylo looked back at it, surprised. 

“I assume you’ve already planned to go about getting it, then?” I asked coolly. When in a hive of scum and villainy, think as scum and villains think, right? 

_ Of course I have. Why would I let you two steal it? _ It made a weird high-pitched growl, but my tug on the Force was doing its job. I just wanted the critter to be honest, after all.

“We’re not after the ship. We’re after who’s on it.” Now it eyed me curiously. “No reason for us to even take the ship off-world. Hell, by takin’ ‘em out, we’ll have practically done you a favor. You’ll have what you want, and so will we.” 

_ I see. _ It appeared to be considering this. Kylo stared at me, but my eyes never left the bird-lizard. Pendewqell crossed its arms. _ If I tell you, what assurance do I have you won’t damage or steal it yourself? _

Well, shit. That was a good question.

“If you think about it, Dew,” I started, hoping I was half as good a grifter as I wanted to be at that moment, “we’re like hired guns. We take out the crew, you get the ship parked for you to pick up at your leisure. Except the fun part is, you don’t gotta pay us. Does that make sense? That’s the offer, dude. The other offers hurt a lot more, too.” I raised an eyebrow at it, and saw it blanch slightly. I tugged a little harder on the thread of the Force, trying to nudge its cooperation. After a tense, silent moment, it squawked again. 

_ It’s parked on the far side of the complex’s waystation. My droids are delivering a part there now. I warn you, I will have that ship, whether you fail or not. _I nodded, glancing at Kylo and canting my head towards the door. 

“I assume you know where you’re going?” His eyes burned into me for a split second before he whirled and exited, and I followed without saying goodbye to Pendewqell. 

“Bold of you to try a manipulation on that one,” he muttered to me as I hurried to keep pace with his incredibly long strides. “He’s not what I would call weak-minded.”

“He didn’t have to be weak-minded,” I pointed out. “He just had to have something he wanted. That was easy enough to get outta him. It was peanuts after that, really.” I saw him grin rather dangerously at me under his hood before he turned back ahead to forge through the crowded passages, leading us towards the waystation.

“This way,” he said quietly, and turned around a corner to take a much less busy back way that was very dark and very fucking ominous, I thought. But we scurried through around bends and stairs, passing by people and aliens who honestly looked like they were meeting their drug dealers, it was that obviously sketchy. Or already on drugs and just riding it out in the quieter parts of the complex. As we entered a part of the way that was a lot wider and clearly almost a storage area, I was starting to think my concerns about it being ominous were a little paranoid. 

A tug from the Force told me I was wrong.

Faster than I was even aware of, my saber was out and deflecting a blaster shot aimed right at Kylo. Then came a barrage of them, and Kylo’s weapon was drawn too. I could just barely see figures crouching behind things on all sides, around corners and piles of crates and metal containers. Blasts ricocheted everywhere, but they were all under cover enough that none of the shots landed back on the assailants. Kylo snarled and proceeded to hack his furious red blade through one of the containers, melting a whole slice of it off.

“AI!” screamed a voice, and I whirled in time to see a figure careening towards me with a laser knife in hand. But my saber was my axis, and in one fluid motion I continued my body’s spin through the air and brought it down. A whole hand thudded to the floor along with the knife, and I brought my blade back around to plunge it through the body of the startled attacker. I ducked down instinctively, dodging another shot. I heard Kylo fighting off another person, and then there were at least a dozen of them hurtling out from their hiding places. This time we weren’t in a relatively open and well-lit patch of woods, like we’d been on Mustafar, so it felt like they were fucking _ everywhere. _

It was a blur, most of that fight, but I do remember catching a laser blade to the ear. I’m real fuckin’ tired of those things, not gonna lie. Kylo was a beast, and always my counterpoint. Fighting with him was as natural as breathing; he the sturdy anchor and I the eddying current around him. But this time, everything was really dark and I was way more disoriented, despite the Force like a web all around me. It was hard not to get distracted by what I couldn’t see instead of trusting the flow. Seems like a metaphor for a lot of things, right?

I was so distracted at one point that I barely noticed I’d managed to fight my way down a hall and pretty far away from Kylo. I was dogging this one attacker, who had been trying to run away and find some better spot to shoot at me once I’d sliced their laser knife in half and deflected all their blasts so far. I’d just managed to slam them bodily into the wall of the next room with a big ol’ push on the Force and thrown my saber to land right in the middle of their chest, when I spun around the corner and came face to face very suddenly with Poe Dameron. 

His eyes flew wide open, and he yanked his blaster out. He was pretty fucking quick, but not as quick as my foot. I kicked it out of his hand, and it clattered to the floor a few yards away.

“Shit!” he swore loudly. 

“Calm the fuck down, dude!” I barked. He staggered away from me. 

“Who the fuck are you?” he retorted as he backed into a pile of metal crates, looking only slightly nervous.

“I’m not gonna kill you.”

“Forgive me for not even _ kinda _ believing you.”

“Would you just take a breath, flyboy? Where’s Rey?” I asked, frowning.

“Who’s askin’?” He frowned back.

“Listen, I’m tryna fuckin’ _ help _ you, okay?” I snapped. “Kylo’s gonna be here any minute to make sure I’m not dead!”

“What?” He was staring at me now like those two sentences didn’t go together. I know that specific look because I’ve gotten it before loads of times during manic episodes (when quite often my sentences actually didn’t go together). 

“I got exactly no time for this shit, Poe. Are y’all gonna go get this Wayfinder, or what?”

“I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”

“No, you really ain’t.” Another tug from the Force, and my saber returned to my hand like a yo-yo and I swung it behind my back. As half a freshly cloven blaster clattered to the ground, I turned around to glare at Finn. He was holding the other half like he’d planned to point it at my neck, except now it was sizzling halfway down the barrel. “Seriously?” I asked him, brow furrowed.

“Um,” he replied, staring at me. I rolled my eyes. 

“Will you just take me to her, please? I got a fuckin’ redemption arc to work on, here!”

“What?” Finn asked, baffled. I tried to think of a way to explain myself that would make sense very quickly.

“I’m trying to help Kylo get his shit ironed out, okay? Like, you know, return to the light and all that shit?” God, I hated saying it that way. It just didn’t feel right. But whatever these nerds needed to hear, honestly.

“You’re trying to save _ Kylo Ren? _” asked Poe, scuttling out of his corner closer to his friend. I turned my saber off, which is a fairly effective de-escalation tactic. 

“To grotesquely oversimplify, yeah. Sure.” 

“How’s _ that _ going?” Finn asked, clearly skeptical. 

“If y’all keep dicking around in here you’ll be able to ask him yourself,” I growled. “That is, if you can talk with a lightsaber down your throat.”

“We’re not dead yet, to be fair,” Poe pointed out to the ex-trooper.

“Are you saying you’re on her side?” Finn hissed in reply.

“_Their _ side,” I corrected. “I am a they, not a she or a he. Kylo can get it right, so you have no excuse.”

“Sorry,” muttered Finn. “But how do we know we can trust you?”

“You don’t.”

“That’s super encouraging,” Poe chimed in flatly.

“I just wanna talk to Rey for like, ten fucking seconds, please,” I said. 

“Then speak.” The voice came from the other exit to the room from the one I was near, and my head whipped over to see Rey standing there, staring at me with her brow knit. “Quickly.” _ Oh, thank God. _

“Listen, Kylo just wants to follow y’all to the Wayfinder,” I said to her. “The other one’s destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” she asked, brow knitting even more. “How?”

“Long story,” I muttered. “Anyway my point is, he wants to kill the Emperor, and I kinda figured y’all might have that in common.”

“Yeah but _ why _ does he want to kill the Emperor?” Finn asked from the peanut gallery. I glanced at him and felt a pang in my gut, remembering the day Kylo had told me I couldn’t leave, the exact words he’d given. 

“Before the Emperor kills him. Or me. Or anyone else. Before he can take anything else from us.” I looked back at Rey, and I could feel the thread of the Force strung thin and delicate between us. I didn’t tug on it, though. I didn’t need to. She looked at me funny, like she could almost but not quite understand what I meant. 

“That’s funny, I would’ve assumed it was so there were no other threats to his power,” Poe mused. I rolled my eyes. 

“Did he tell you why he’s down here?” Rey asked me. I shook my head, wondering what hellish complication might be about to rear its ugly head. “Because I saw him, earlier, through our connection. I told him I was here. I told him to come and get the knife if he wanted it so badly, because there’s no way I’m letting him take the Wayfinder.”

“He’s incredibly easy to goad, that one,” I murmured. My brain was bursting with questions about when exactly she’d had this conversation with him, and if it was while Matt was piloting or while we were fucking or _ God I hope it wasn’t while we were fucking. That would be so weird. _

“I told him that because I hoped we might talk. About you.”

_ Oh, okay. _

“Would y’all have this talk before or after one or both of you got stabbed with a lightsaber?” I asked, smirking a little. I mean, I saw her logic. If she’d asked him down for a cuppa tea and a little chat about his new apprentice she’d impaled because I told her I was sent by Luke Skywalker, he probably wouldn’t go for it. But it was still funny to me. 

“I thought maybe bringing you up would get his attention. You certainly seem to get that pretty quickly.” Now she was smirking a little, and I narrowed my eyes at her.

“I think you better cut out the Supreme Middle Man and just talk directly to me next time, dude. Since I’m not dead after all. He doesn’t know I’m here because of Luke, and I’d like to keep it that way for a minute,” I said.

“How exactly are you helping him?” she asked.

“It’s literally way too complicated to get into right now. If you and me can have this talk later, will you?” I shot back quickly, eyes shining at her._ Come on, man. Don’t flake on me now _. But she looked serious, and unhappy.

“Rey, you don’t believe this shit, do you?” Poe asked, exasperated.

“She does have a purple light saber instead of a red one,” Finn intoned to him. 

“_They _ have a purple light saber, and are you saying you’re on their side, now?” the pilot hissed.

“Sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll get it,” Finn apologized, looking sheepishly at me. Suddenly there was a crash from back the way I’d come, and I knew time was up. I stared at Rey, and she stared back. 

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked. _ Remember that time I let you get off Kylo Ren’s fucking spaceship with the knife that shows you how to get to the Sith Wayfinder? _I thought. I groaned in frustration, but then remembered what had happened earlier in the Ishi Tib’s shop.

“Check that part you just had replaced. There’s a tracker in it. The merchant is some ex-smuggler type, and he wants to steal the ship.” Another, closer crash, a bellowing roar, and the hum of a saber. Rey just looked at me for a moment, and then turned and dashed off down the hallway. 

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Poe said, darting over to pick up his blaster off the floor and taking off after her with Finn on his heels. I rubbed my forehead as they vanished deeper into the guts of the complex, feeling a headache coming on. I turned around to see Kylo rush into the room with his saber drawn. When his eyes landed on me, he stopped. 

“Aeon, what happened?” he asked as he caught his breath.

“This guy gave me a hell of a time. I got real unfocused because it was so fucking dark in there,” I replied quickly, tucking my saber back onto my belt. “Who are these assholes?”

“Republic sympathizers, probably. Unless Dew hired a whole squad of bounty hunters after we left, but he’s too cheap for that.” 

“You okay?” I asked, looking him over for wounds. 

“I’m fine. Your ear looks bad,” he said, brow crumpling in worry. _ Oh yeah, that. _

“Don’t worry about it. If you hadn’t mentioned it, I woulda forgot it was there.” Actually, I really had forgotten it. The adrenaline had kept me from feeling it, and now that I wasn’t fighting off half-visible enemies anymore I was slowly starting to feel it. Which I would have preferred not to do, because it stung like a motherfucker. On top of the headache.

“There’s bacta spray in the shuttle,” he murmured, turning off his weapon. “We’ll see to it as soon as we can. Come, the platform is close.” He hurried down the hallway Rey &co had just vacated, and I followed him, trying to summon a good plan for how to have a Force phone call with Rey. Assuming she would agree to it, which was a very fucking broad assumption for me to make, but it was too late. I’d already bet on that horse.

Needless to say, the Falcon was disappearing into the frenzied lights of the city-planet as we ran out onto the platform. Kylo bellowed in fury and slammed his fist into a metal container that was nearby, putting a sizable dent in it. I just let him stand there and vibrate with anger for a minute as I pondered my predicament. Once he was emitting less steam, I stepped over to him.

“I have an idea,” I said quietly, nervously, hoping to God the idea in my head might work.

“What?” he growled, not looking at me.

“How about instead of letting them lead us on a wild goose chase, we bring them to us?” Now he looked back, wheels in his head turning behind his blazing eyes.

“I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> literally none of this happens in RoS so no spoilers lol
> 
> i LOVE Y'ALL i'm just gonna keep sayin it <3 <3


	62. Chapter 62

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Force and a conference call are basically the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some smut in this chapter for y'all <3

When Kylo and I arrived back on the _Supremacy,_ he marched ahead of me on the way to the medical bay listening to updates on his communicator. I’ll spare y’all the details, but they were still trying to fix and/or figure out the broken Wayfinder, no other creepy transmissions had arrived from Palpatine, and despite probably finding and scraping off their bonus tracker from Nar Shaddaa, the First Order still was able to track the _ Falcon. _ I was sitting on a hospital bed eavesdropping on it all, with a little black droid sewing carbon webbing onto my ear. 

“It is a superficial wound only, Aeon,” said Lucky. “It should heal speedily. Are you damaged elsewhere?” 

“Nah, just the ear,” I replied, wincing as the stitcher droid finished it work and floated away. 

“Your brain scans are in very heightened wave-particle activity right now, but all of your other levels are very stable. How are you feeling?”

“I’m… I dunno. There’s a lot to deal with. I think after the adventure I just had, I’m too tired to worry about shit.” Of course, I was always latently worried about royally fucking up my whole purpose in staying here, but that wasn’t new. I was starting to think the wave/particle activity was part of how the Force worked, but I knew better than to ask the irreligious Lucky.

“Your stress hormones are also uncharacteristically stable. It is possible you are adapting to your environment.” 

“Oh, well that’s good.”

“It is significant progress, yes.” It looked at me with its expressionless face, almost like it was expecting me to say something else. I raised an eyebrow at it. 

“Yes, Lucky?”

“You have elevated and highly stable mood-related neurotransmitters and electrical activity. There is an abundance of oxytocin in your brain as well. I have noticed an improvement in your overall demeanor since your arrival on this ship, despite a variety of unexpected events. Would you report that you are… happy?” I blinked at it, a little surprised by the question.

“Um, well, happier than I was, yeah. Not that I don’t still have lots of stress to deal with, but. I’d… I’d say I’m happy?” For some reason this had me both a little confused and little embarrassed. 

“A significant increase in your overall happiness, then?” it asked. Just at that moment Kylo approached the alcove, having turned off his communicator. His expression was a little stony, but I think something about the way I looked at him surprised him. He paused and looked back at me with a gentle curiosity falling over his face. I smiled faintly.

“Yeah. I’d say so.” 

“Alright. I will add this to your chart. It is good news, Aeon.” I didn’t look away from Kylo, and my smile got a little more obvious. Now he looked a little confused, like he wasn’t sure what what my expression was about even though he seemed to like it.

“Thanks, Lucky. You’re definitely part of the reason.”

“Of course, Imminent Apprentice. I will leave you to your duties.” And the droid rumbled away. I got the faint impression that it was legitimately expressing its own happiness that I was doing better these days, not just running through protocol.

“What’s that look for?” Kylo asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just appreciating you.” _ And Matt, of course, but I’ll tell him that later. _ His dark-haired alter just raised a hand to brush it against my cheek.

“You do that a lot.” For once, there was no overt double-entendre in his voice.

“I give you lip a lot, too, so I guess you win some you lose some, right?” I replied, grinning.

“You giving me lip is just fine, too,” he purred. Now there was maybe a little more double-entendre happening. 

“Good, because I have no intention of stopping.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.” His fingers trailed down my neck softly, and I felt a little shiver run up my spine as it always did. Then I remembered that I didn’t wanna get distracted from certain conversations by how ungodly sexy Kylo always was.

“So, how’d you know Rey was down there, anyway?” I asked. His face only fell a little.

“She spoke to me through our bond and told me.”

“Oh, yeah?” I was playing dumb, curious to know what details he’d omit.

“She was taunting me, I believe. But I sensed she had some ulterior motive, though I’m unsure what.” _ Okay, so he isn’t hiding much at all, actually. That’s… pretty cool. _

“When did she do that, exactly?”

“While you and Matt were busy.” He raised an eyebrow at me. I grimaced a little, but decided not to inquire further.

“Are you sure you’re on board with my plan?” I asked him a little nervously.

“No. But I’m willing to take the first step and see where it goes.” 

“Alright, I’ll take that.” I nodded at him. “I’m ready if you are.” 

\-----

In the meditation room, Kylo and I sat next to each other on pillows with a third pillow in front of us. Outside the window hung a familiar desert planet that orbited a binary star system. I put my hands on my knees as I sat with my legs crossed, breathing slowly and feeling the loop of Force energy between us. That was all I had to do, at that moment. The rest was up to him. 

We sat there for a while, not sure how long. Long enough for me to start getting antsy. I realized that one of my knees was bouncing when he reached a large hand over gently to stop it. 

“Be still,” he said quietly. “Please.”

“Sorry.” And we went back to silence. I closed my eyes, trying to either meditate or find out if I could nap upright. I was actually pretty close to nodding off when I felt it. My eyes opened as if of their own accord, and there on the pillow in front of us was Rey. For a split second, she stared between me and Kylo in silence.

“Oh, hey,” I said casually. “Thanks for coming.” She just eyed me for a second.

“What do you want?” she asked finally.

“I think we should talk about this whole Wayfinder thing,” I replied. 

“I have nothing to say I haven’t said already.”

“We’re willing to collaborate on this one goal,” Kylo said. “As I assume you plan to use the location of Exegol to find Palpatine and destroy him?”

“Of course,” she replied, frowning. “But why would you want to do the same thing?”

“Our differences aside, Palpatine is a threat to all of us,” he said.

“I can’t put ‘our differences’ aside!” she exclaimed. “The First Order is a threat to the rest of the galaxy as much as Palpatine is!”

“Yeah, but we have more firepower than you,” I pointed out. “What if he’s got goons? I doubt he got back-alive enough to send a gnarly threatening broadcast all by his lonesome.”

“You’re asking me to collaborate with you? Seriously? You thought that would work?” She was really having none of it. I looked up at Kylo. 

“How’s he feeling?” I asked him quietly. I was talking about Matt, of course, hoping he was in the co-pilot’s seat.

“He’s not very excited, I’ll put it that way.”

“You think he’ll come out?”

“We’ll see.”

“What are you both talking about?” Rey interjected, looking now both angry and confused.

“What do you know about Kylo Ren and Ben Solo, Rey?” I asked her quietly. 

“I know Ben Solo became Kylo Ren when he joined with the darkness.”

“Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong.” I tried to hide my smirk as I totally plagiarized Luke’s favorite phrase from _ Episode VIII. _ This time specifically because both of the people in the room had heard it. “He’s both Kylo and Ben, and someone else named Mattau Anto. Three distinct persons who all inhabit the same body.”

For a moment, she glanced between the two of us again silently.

“What?” she said finally. 

“I have what my apprentice calls dissociated personalities,” Kylo said, glancing at me as if to confirm he’d said the right words. I gave him a little smile and nod. “I am Kylo. Ben Solo is another, and Mattau Anto the third.”

“H-how does that work, exactly?” she asked, profoundly confused.

“For many years I’ve been the primary alter. Matt used to pilot more back at the Academy, and Ben is still a child. We simply switch who is occupying the body at a given time.” 

“At will?”

“Most switches are involuntary, sometimes triggered by certain things; often one will push to the front. But occasionally we’ve coordinated them, moreso lately. That doesn’t always work, either.”

“Does… I mean, did your family know about this? Did Luke?” Now she was hitting on sketchy territory, for me, being that I hadn’t talked to anyone about my affiliation with Luke except her and I had no way to know that she’d keep her mouth shut about it. Except to trust the hope that she still thought he was worth saving and that I might actually manage it, I guess.

“They all knew. None of them understood.” For now, Kylo’s expression was even.

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t tell you _ why _ they didn’t understand. Probably because none of them experienced the same thing, but that’s just the surface.”

“What’s the point of telling me this?” Rey asked, now looking between us again.

“I know you don’t wanna collaborate with the Supreme Leader of the First Order,” I said. “But would you wanna collaborate with someone else too, even if they were in the same body?” She eyed me, incredulous as hell.

“Aeon?” came a soft voice, and I looked over to see that Matt had indeed hopped in the pilot’s seat and was now looking at me anxiously. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes much softer, his entire demeanor totally shifted. His Force-signature really _ was _ different from Kylo’s, and now that I was connected to both of them I could feel their switches even more plainly than I had before.

“Hey,” I said quietly to him, reaching out to put my hand over his. “Thank you.” He glanced up at Rey, who was staring almost slack-jawed. _I think s_ _ he can tell. _

“Hi. I’m Matt,” he told her in his gentle, nervous voice. “You’re Rey, right?”

“I…” She looked between the two of us again, then down at where my hand rested on his, then back at Matt’s face. “Yeah, I’m Rey.”

“Matt, we’re talking about how both Kylo and Rey, and I guess technically me too, all want to solve the Palpatine problem,” I said. “She’s not keen on working with Kylo, for obvious reasons, but I was wondering if you might be willing to join in with us this time.” He looked at me, clearly anxious about his role in such a plan, and I squeezed his hand. _ Trust me. _ His eyes turned back to the girl.

“Oh. I mean, I can’t say I’m a warrior, but I’m on board with that plan too.” He shrugged a little. “You want my help?”

“Um. Maybe,” Rey said cautiously. 

“We can come to some terms, if you want,” I suggested. “Like, maybe we go scout out Exegol before anyone with firepower shows up, just to see what’s going on? And like, agree to not try to run off with the Wayfinder or anything like that? I dunno. Write a contract, or pledge in blood if we have to, I don’t care.”

“I… this is a lot to take in, alright?” she said, putting her hands in the air.

“It’s cool, you got time to think about it. Seeing as you crash-landed and now every settlement and waystation in a fifty kilometer radius is swarming with our troopers.” I noticed the cool tone creeping into my voice, and tried to offset it a little. “I’m sorry, by the way. That smuggler creep on Nar Shaddaa was smarter than he looked when it came to trying to get his hands on the _Falcon,_ it seems.”

“How did you know about that tracker?” Rey asked, brow furrowing at me. 

“Because we spoke to the merchant to find you, and based on the information I retrieved from him it was a safe bet he’d bugged your part.”

“Oh, so that’s how you got so close to us so quickly. I thought it might take longer since I didn’t tell Kylo exactly where-- wait, how did--”

“Listen, the Force works in mysterious ways, alright?” I snapped. And I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t actually know how Kylo knew an Ishi Tib merchant who wanted to steal the _Millennium Falcon,_ but I had a feeling that it had something to do with his dad. And we all know that’s a sore subject. “Do you know what the knife says?” 

“No,” she answered, slightly scowly. “We tried to retrieve a translation from a protocol droid but it didn’t work out.” 

“If it’s in the Sith language, Kylo can probably read it. Or most of it,” Matt chimed in. “It’s that knife, isn’t it? The one from the legends?”

“Yeah,” Rey said to him, still staring at him like she couldn’t get over the uncanny valley she’d descended into. I got the distinct impression that she was gonna go about trying to retrieve said translation without Kylo Ren’s help and hopefully scoot off to her destination before we could stop her. Which is to say, I didn’t think she was gonna go for it.

“Yeah, Kylo could read at least some of it. I can’t, though.” 

“How do I know this isn’t all bullshit?” the girl piped up rather suddenly, and she was looking right at me when she said it. I stared back at her, irritated.

“You can use the Force, right? Like, you’re a Jedi basically? So can’t you tell it’s not bullshit? Can’t you feel it?” I replied pointedly.

“It’s okay, nobody really believes us at first,” Matt said quietly to me. I exhaled and looked at him, frowning.

“Yeah, but it’s right there. In the Force. It’s so obvious!”

“It still scares people.” He was imploring me with his tone to be nice, now. His other hand came over mine gently as he smiled a little. “You are _ not _ like everybody else, hun.” I sighed.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” I looked back at Rey, who was watching our brief interaction with a strange look on her face. “Listen. We just wanna talk terms. But y’all know you’re sitting ducks right now, and we could come take it if we wanted to. We’d rather work together on this one.”

“That’s not very compelling, seeing as it’s not a real choice.” Her face was stone. Grumpy stone. Could I really blame her, though?

“Believe me, that’s a habit of Kylo’s I’m encouraging him to break.”

“I’ve got to talk to my friends about this before we answer, about what terms we might be willing to accept.”

“Go ahead,” I replied with a shrug. She stared at me, and then at Matt for just a second. And then she was gone. I sighed, looking at the empty place she left behind. “They’re already planning to try and get past our little siege.”

“I’m surprised you thought I might convince her,” Matt replied with an apologetic smile.

“It was the only thing I could think of, honestly.” I reached out to touch his face, weird as it was without his compulsory blond hair dye. It was still his, and I could always tell. “Thanks for coming out. You didn’t have to do it. I hope she thinks about it, at least.” I smiled at him. “You’re so cute, too. If she doesn’t agree, she might be evil.” He blushed and laughed. 

“Yeah, okay,” he murmured. “What’s the next step?”

“Wait a little while, see if they’ll talk again. They’re totally surrounded, like Kylo pulled out all the stops. Whether or not they agree, we’ll have to head down planetside. There’s already a shuttle prepped for that.”

“Damn, you two really thought this out.” I grinned at him.

“To be fair, the faulty part really gave us a window we didn’t have before. I guess we’re lucky that ship is famous enough to catch a lotta criminal attention. I didn’t think that dude would be smart enough to double-sabotage the part he sold them, though.”

“I miss it,” Matt said quietly. “The _Falcon._ I’m… I’d like to get to see it again. I didn’t get to, the last time it was here.” I looked at him, surprised by his sudden change of mood. I squeezed his hand. 

“We’ll see if we can’t at least let you say hello,” I replied, leaning in to kiss his cheek. As I did so, I felt a tear fall down it and around my mouth. I pulled back to take his face in my hands. “Hey, you okay?”

“I… I m-miss Mom and Dad,” he mumbled, shutting his eyes as more tears ran from them. “Being so close to the _Falcon_’s just reminding me of them so much.” _ Shit. I can’t ever watch any of them cry about Han and Leia without also crying. _Sure enough, my eyes watered immediately. 

“I’m sorry, Matt,” I told him softly. “I’m sorry. I… I miss my parents, too.” It hit me like a ton of bricks right as I said it. I couldn’t remember their details, but I remembered what it was like being around them and all the things they’d done to try their broken best to support me. 

“I hope you get to see yours again.” That just made me sadder.

“Kylo talked to me about Han, once,” I almost whispered. His eyes flew open.

“What… what did he say?”

“He said he really thought it was the right thing to do, then. I guess Snoke had him thinking it was the best way to protect Ben. But he regretted it so horribly. I’d never seen him cry from his own feelings before, though one time he ran smack into a big ol’ pile of my memories and they pulled a few tears out of him. But this wasn’t the same thing. He’s convinced he failed you both, and probably everyone else, too.” I sighed. Matt was silent for a moment, taking all that in.

“I knew he regretted it. I never thought he’d admit it, though. Even to himself.” I stroked his hair.

“I did say he was growing. I really believe it.” He gave a little nod.

“I believe you. His notes… thank you. For showing him things could be different. I think he just thought he had to be strong, and angry. You gave him the opportunity to be something else,” he said. I shrugged.

“He didn’t expect me to understand him at all. But we have way more in common than he thought. I wanna try to understand people, since so few people seem willing to try to understand me.” I smiled at him. “You both do pretty well at that, actually.”

“We try,” he replied, smiling back at me and leaning forward. He placed a gentle kiss on my lips, and I felt warmth spreading over my body from the little pang in my heart. Whatever anger was lurking under it, all his sweetness was totally genuine at least. Slowly he tugged me towards him, one hand on my face and the other slipping around my back. I uncrossed my legs and let his gravity draw me up onto his lap.

“Oh, Matt,” I sighed when he pulled off my hooded cowl and his mouth made its easy way onto my jaw, my neck. “When this is all over, let’s go on a date in our matching red dresses.”

“Mhm,” he replied, and his tongue slipped out to press hot and wet against my pulse, sending a wave of shivers down my body. My head sagged backwards to let him have more room, and he tugged the strap of my tank top off my shoulder to kiss the skin under it. He was gentle when he came to the parts of my collarbone that had Kylo’s fading bruises on them. I slipped my hands between us to pull at the zipper of his jacket, running my fingers lightly over the soft skin of his chest.

“Ah!” I let out a little gasp when his big, warm hand slid up under my shirt and started stroking one of my nipples. The little zaps from that touch flew right down between my legs “Fuck, Matt! You wanna go upstairs?”

“No,” he murmured against my collarbone. “I want you right now.” _ Oh, wow, okay! _ His other hand was pushing itself beneath the waistband of my pants against my belly. I spread my legs wider on either side of him, leaning my torso back a little. He swirled a finger around my clit, waking up my entire nervous system. My breaths got heavy, and I stared up at him. His eyes were heavy-lidded, face flushed, lips hung slightly open. Watching me with his signature ardent hyperfocus, his hand started to move faster. 

“It was kinda hot watching you talk to Rey just now. You got a little bossy,” he told me in a husky voice, hand gripping my side so he could lean my torso further back. 

“Oh you-- ahh-- like me bossy now?”

“You can boss me around whenever you want.” He was bent over me, and for all his talk he was pretty heavily controlling my movements at that moment, fingers still working at my clit. I looked up at him through my eyebrows.

“Yeah? Why don’t you put your fingers inside me, then?” Huffing, he obediently slipped two fingers down towards my entrance, slick with anticipation, and pushed them in. I shuddered as he stroked up and down against my g-spot, pace steady.

“Like this?” he asked, and he was flushed with desire, face turning pink.

“Y-yes, good pet.” Giving orders when I was already starting to clench up through my abdomen was going to be an interesting struggle. When I called him that, though, the look on his face was worth the effort. I leaned back with my hands on his knees. “Take out your pretty cock for me.”

“Oh! Yes-- wait. What should I call you?” He stopped, looking confused._ Ohmigod he's so cute. _

“If I’m bossing you around, I like sir,” I said, smirking. Sir is just such a satisfying thing to be called, you know? Maybe it’s the hard ‘R’ sound, I dunno. “Or Your Radiance, of course.”

“Um, yes Your Radiance,” he stammered, turning pink again, reaching for the clasp of his pants with his free hand. 

“And don’t stop touching me.”

Hastily he resumed the curling up of his fingers inside me. I moaned, and watched him tug himself out of his trousers. He was already stiff and leaking precum, and I couldn’t help but bite my lip. But when his hand strayed down over it, I reached over and stopped it.

“Don’t touch yourself. Only I get to touch you, today.”

“Y-yessir!” He withdrew quickly, and kept his pace inside me despite being so flustered. I could feel my nerves sparkling while I watched his cock twitch as it reached out towards me, head lolling on the leg of my soft pants as his hand worked beneath them. He stared down at those movements.

“Do you-- fuck-- wanna see?” I asked breathily.

“Yes, please,” he murmured.

“Yes, please, who?”

“Yes please, sir!” _ Man, okay. I see what Kylo enjoys about this, I really do. _ Smirking, I pulled back away from him to lie backwards between his legs and pull my bottoms off slowly, keeping my legs together and back so he could see my ripened cunt right there in front of him while I did. He bit his lip, hands stiff like he didn’t know what he was allowed to do with them. I sat back up, propping myself up on my wrists and settling my legs spread wide to either side of his torso. I was dangerously close to his cock, and I could see him straining not to notice too much.

“You can touch me now.”

“Yessir.” His voice was almost hoarse, it was so low and laden with desire. His fingers came back to slide up my slit, to circle my clit. I jerked involuntarily as my body flooded with sensations again.

“Oooh fuck, Matt. You like to be my pet, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” 

“Like to watch yourself while you touch me, hm?”

“Oh, Maker, yes!” He was breathing hard now, his other hand on my thigh as he started to flush. “Please, can I taste you?”

“You wanna put that precious mouth on me?”

“Yes sir, _ please, _” he begged, pouting just a little.

“God, you’re so cute when you beg like that,” I sighed, and hoisted myself up to standing. With him sitting the way he was, it brought my nethers right up to his face.

“Oooh,” he sighed onto my cunt. “Thank you, Your Radiance.” And he wasted no time at all tucking his nose into my crotch, lapping out with this tongue against my opening. 

“Fuuck,” I groaned, as turned on by his worshipful gratitude as by his actions, gripping his hair in my hands. “Oh, you’re so welcome, pretty thing.” Now his tongue was flicking against my bud, and I ground my hips gently into his face. “You’re not touching yourself-- hnn-- are you Matt?” I chided when I realized I couldn’t feel his hands anywhere. They shot up to my legs immediately, gripping my thighs.

“Nushir!” he replied into my cunt, and I giggled a little.

“You’re too good-- ah-- a pet for that, right?”

“Yeshir.” He laved his tongue flat against me, swirled it around my entrance, then went back to suckling on my clit. I moaned, gripping his hair as heat started to compound inside me.

“Fuck, your mouth is _ so _ good,” I sighed, feeling my legs start to tremble a little. “But I wanna taste you, too.” He made a muffled noise of either confusion or excitement or both, and I stepped back so I could turn around. I looked back to see his surprised expression turn into an extremely wanton one, heavy lidded eyes staring at my ass before he nuzzled his nose between my cheeks. He put his hands right back on my thighs, kneading the skin just shy of my cunt with his thumbs and dipping his tongue inside me. I took a moment to suck in a breath and feel a little woozy at that, then bent forward until his cock was proud against my cheek and my hands were on the floor. I’m pretty flexible at the hips, and this seemed like a great way to make the best use of that to me.

“Mph!” He jumped a little at the sensation of my pursing my lips against the head of him, licking the salty pearl off it. I kept my mouth loose and wet and soft, teasing him, moaning as his tongue lapped at my folds. His fingers came above his nose to push inside me, working diligently to bring me sailing right up to the edge. 

“Fuck-- stop!” I ordered, and immediately his touches vanished. I pressed myself up and stood upright again, turning around once more. His eyes stared up at me, black and hungry. I stroked his unusually dark hair. “I wanna ride you, pet. Get these off.” I rubbed my foot against his pants, and he complied like his life depended on it. I started to kneel, pushing his torso back slowly until he was lying on his back on the floor. I ran my hands up the opened jacket, smearing my wetness over his lips before slipping a finger into his mouth. He was struggling to contain just how aroused he was, his face still flushed and eyelids fluttering as I rubbed his tongue very tenderly. “Do you like how I touch you, Matt?”

“Yethur,” he replied around my finger. I just smirked at him, and withdrew my hand so I could take a step back between his legs. 

“Lift these up.” Breathlessly, he bent his knees with his legs wide, his cock lying back against his torso. “Mm, good, pet.” I knelt and pushed on the backs of his knees, splaying him even wider open before me on the floor. He whimpered, stunned by his own vulnerability in that position but in a very clearly excited way. I bent my head down to run my nose and mouth against his length from base to tip, taking a deep breath of his musky smell. 

“Oh, shit,” he cursed as I laved my tongue flat against the underside of his head. “I’m so hard for you, sir!”

“Oh? Is that you requesting something?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow as I looked up at him. 

“I… I want inside you, sir, please.”

“You are so much better at being a good little pet than I am,” I crooned, giving him a sly smile. “I’m the very worst, but you just butter me right up. Hard to say no to someone so beautiful and sweet.” I rose up on my knees, and his eyes were big and fixed on me like he was floored by my praise and desperate to find out what I was about to do. I took his magnificent cock in my hand, and leaned over him a little to position myself over it. “Tell me what you want, again?”

“I want to be inside you sir!” I hovered, entrance just over the head of him. 

“What do you say?” I cooed.

“Please, sir,” he whined. So I took mercy on him and slowly sank down, shuddering as his entire length slid inside me. He sucked in a breath, hands clamping down on his own legs to spread them as wide as he could. For a moment I shut my eyes and took in the delicious pressure of sheathing him. Then I looked back down at him, bending forward a little to put my hands on his massive chest as I slowly started to grind into him. His eyes were wide as he stared into mine, his plush mouth falling open. 

“How’s this, pet?” I panted.

“Amazing, sir!”

“You like when I lay you out all pretty for me like this and fuck you?”

“Yessir!”

“Mm-- shit--” I picked up the intensity of my thrusts, leaning back a little and pushing down on his thighs. “Oh-- your beautiful cock-- feels so-- fucking-- good!”

“Will you ride me till you cum sir?” he asked, voice frantic.

“You want me-- to cum-- hn-- on your cock-- sweet thing?”

“Yessir, please sir!”

“Fuck--” My hips started to rut wildly, grinding and pushing the upward curve of him against my g-spot. But I wanted more, wanted to watch his eyes as he watched me, so I leaned up and then back, propping myself up with my hands, legs pushing into a crouch. It was a strange interlocking position, but this angle pressed him against my inner walls with an entirely new level of pressure. I gasped and started to buck my hips. “Touch me, Matt!”

“Y-yes, sir!” he mewled, reaching out with one hand to rub against my clit. My nerves started to crackle, my body wrapping itself up tight in the center around the mounting need to orgasm. I bounced up and down, faster and faster. Exactly as I’d wanted, I saw him start to get closer and closer as his eyes watched me sink down onto him over and over.

“Oh my God-- _ fuck, _it’s so good-- I’m gonna--” 

“Please cum, sir!” At his pleading, my body found the trip-wire for its release. Clamping down around him, I tried to keep the motion of my body going even as shaky as it was while my nerves lashed in response to his fingers. I felt his hips start to tremble, heard his heavy breaths get ragged and growly. “Fuck! Aeon!” he rasped as he spilled into me, the sensations puddling together and rippling through us. As my climax crested and began to fall away, I pulled my hips off his and let myself collapse onto the ground, gasping. I heard him shuffle off his back and towards me, curling up to wrap me in his arms. I leaned my head against his chest and listened to the sound of his breaths as they began to slowly return to a normal pace.

“Hmm,” I sighed happily. “You’re good at taking orders.” He chuckled.

“Sometimes I like to.” His hand rubbed my torso gently. “You’re good at giving them.”

“I try.”

“What was that you just did?”

“Uh, they call it the Amazon position back home. Which is a goofy name, but.”

“I’ve never felt…” He blushed, nuzzling my head. “You taking control like that was incredibly hot.” I looked up at him and smiled.

“Thank you. How much you loved it was really hot.”

“Maker,” he mumbled, grinning sheepishly. I couldn't stop smiling. He's just so fucking angelic. 

“I can’t help I just love watching someone so big and strong turn into putty in my hands,” I told him, rubbing my hand on his chest. He sighed.

“It’s so nice that you like so many things. I was afraid you wouldn’t be into some of the stuff I found out I like.”

“Oh, you got lucky with me, I like lots of things.” He laughed. 

“Very lucky, for many reasons.” I blushed a little as he kissed my forehead sweetly. _ Ohmigosh. _

“Let’s get cleaned up and stuff, Kylo’s gonna wanna check in with Rey at some point and I’d rather he wasn’t pissed that we, ah, delayed it,” I said, giggling. Matt giggled too, and we drew ourselves up from the ground to go get presentable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i love Aeon getting bossy. i'm all about the switchy dynamics and i love that Matt is getting more confident as a top AND more willing to be a bottom. it just makes me happy. plus, the Amazon is a dumbass name for a super hot sex position 10/10 would recommend. 
> 
> <3


	63. Chapter 63

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are loads of fun surprises...

Kylo hopped back up front even quicker than I’d expected, in fact Matt was mid-sentence, talking about how repulsorlift engines had to be calibrated to the environment of the planet they were on, when suddenly his face got stony and serious in that way only Kylo’s ever did. He apologized for not being much of an engineer and so was unable to complete said sentence when I told him what Matt had been saying, and I laughed. We were sitting on the bed, me pulling on my boots and Kylo his jacket, when suddenly I felt the faintest tug. He turned his head away from me, to the other side of the room. But nobody was there. 

“Have you decided?” he asked thin air. I blinked and looked between him and the vague area he was talking to. Which, I mean, I wasn’t judging. Talking to apparently-nobody was one of my involuntary pastimes, after all.

He paused as though listening to a reply. 

“Of course… It doesn’t work like that often. I was surprised it did this time.” He raised an eyebrow at nothing. “No. My ship’s going to remain in orbit. Our being on the surface of the planet is your assurance they won’t blow it up… Yes. We’ll accompany you to the settlement for parts. Matt can help you repair the ship, if he decides to… The division will depart once we’ve landed safely. You have our word.”

Then the unusual pull of the Force was gone, and he turned his head back to me. 

“Was that her?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes. They’ve agreed to work with us as long as we pull back the troopers.”

“Oh.” For some reason, because jealousy is a petty little jerk, I felt kinda icky about not being able to see her, about witnessing their Force bond in action without being a part of it. Which was entirely goofy, but it still happened. I tucked the feeling away. “Well, now I know how everyone else feels when I’m seein’ shit, I guess. We’re headed down to Tatooine, then?”

“Yes, and keep your eyes open,” he said, pulling his gloves on as he stood up. 

“Yeah, they’re gonna try and get away without us. I have that feeling.” I let out a breath, thinking about the gold dice in the other room. I wondered if it was a bad time to bring them up. “Do, um… do you have anything you could, I dunno, bring them? As a token of good faith?” I asked, standing up also. He looked like he was pondering this.

“Nothing I’m willing to part with,” he replied finally. “Let’s go.” I’m not sure why, but part of me was happy he wanted to keep his dad’s dice. The other part of me was thinking they might help our cause, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

\-----

I got why Anakin hated sand so much by the time we got out of the shuttle and were marching across a dune on the way to the Falcon. It was already in my boots and covering my black pants by the time we got there. Outside of it were Rey, Finn, Poe, and BB-8. I held in a squeal when I saw the little droid and it gave a nervous beep. _ Ohmigod he’s even cuter in person! _

“It’s okay BB-8, we’ll kill them if they try anything,” Poe told it, glancing up at us pointedly. 

“Don’t worry, we won’t try anything,” I retorted flatly, crossing my arms.

“Do you have the knife?” Kylo asked Rey in his usual gruff tone.

“Yes,” she replied, terse but less antagonistic than before, which I thought was interesting.

“May I look at it?” His face was unreadable, which by now I knew meant that he was probably having all sorts of feelings. 

“So you can read it?”

“Yes.”

“Will you give us the translation?”

“After the ship is repaired, I will.”

“Why then?” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to take that, too?”

“I had intended to accompany you to the Wayfinder in it.” I glanced over at him, then back at the three of them while their faces turned every manner of incredulous.

“You wanna come with us?” Finn asked, looking very unhappy at the prospect. 

“On the _Falcon_?” Poe added unnecessarily.

“Yes.” Kylo’s eyes were leveled on Rey, who also looked puzzled. “As a gesture of collaboration, and good will.” 

“And to make sure we don’t get it before you do and leave you there, right?” the girl asked.

“Figured it would prevent both parties from doing that if we were on the same ship,” I chimed in. “You know, force us to get along?”

“Good luck with that part, even if the first part works out,” Poe remarked dryly, crossing his arms. I narrowed my eyes at him. _ I used to eat spicy little hotshots like you for breakfast, dickhead. And that was before I could use a lightsaber. _ But I kept my mouth shut valiantly. Rey was stepping towards us, digging in her shoulder bag. Apparently she’d decided. She held out the knife.

“You can take it to your master,” she said to me, and despite her general mistrust of both of us there was nothing especially disdainful in the way she called him that. I walked up to her, met her bright and fearless gaze.

“Thank you.” I said it without any hint of condescension or irritation in my voice. I saw her expression fall slightly, like for a split second she began to really believe that I was working on helping Kylo come back around to the people who cared about him the most. I reached out and gingerly took the thing by its hilt.

Suddenly, I was on that same massive metal wreck I’d seen so many times before. The waves were torrential, mercilessly beating against and roaring over it. For the first time, though, I knew where it was. _What_ it was. Something in my guts told me, as ridiculous as it might sound, that I was standing on the ruined remains of the _Death Star._ I heard the sound of lightsabers clashing, and turned around. 

Kylo and Rey were fighting, in a beautiful and terrible dance that was full of his profound persistence and shocking levels of rage, from her. I’d never dreamed of seeing her so angry it was palpable in the air, and she was ruthless as she lashed out at him. Slowly, though, they both started to flag. I could tell they’d been fighting for a long time, probably all over the place. But they pushed on, lashed against one another, determined to end their fight once and for all. I could almost tell they were reluctant to do so, though. As though neither of them really wanted to kill the other, but they were resigned to their respective fates. 

Then I saw Kylo’s movements falter, as though some unseen thing had caught him in the chest. In that split second, Rey’s blade plunged through his torso and he jerked, stumbled. My eyes flew wide open in horror--

And then Rey was standing right in front of me, battered by the wind and the spray, and she was cloaked in darkness. Her lightsaber was two-pronged and red; her face was beautiful and terrible as her eyes pierced me like arrows--

I blinked, looking down at my hand gripping the little ugly knife. Sand was back inside my boots instead of water, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. Which was not especially upsetting, because it was another thing I was used to happening when the crazy hit. And right now, I was hoping desperately for the first time in a while that I was just crazy. Shaking my head a little, I took a breath.

“Sith artifacts are fuckin’ wild,” I murmured, feeling a mask clamp down over how shaken I was by what I’d just seen._ Don’t think about it right now, don’t think about it right now, don’t think about it right now. _ I walked back over to Kylo, who was looking at me with his brow furrowed.

“Apprentice, are you alright?” he asked me, almost but not quite tenderly. Not in front of company, of course.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, but I stared back into his beautiful dark eyes and felt my stomach tie itself into a knot. I extended the knife towards him, and he kept my eye contact as he took it. Then he looked down and gave the blade a once-over on both sides, brought it closer to his face. I blinked rapidly, feeling the threat of tears behind my eyes, banishing them with all my might. _ Not right now! _

“Alright,” he said, handing the knife back to me.

“Cool,” I breathed with entirely fake levels of chill, and with only a blink of hesitation I took it back. Nothing happened this time, and I started feeling awfully paranoid. I turned and marched it back to Rey, who looked at me strangely as she retrieved it from my hand. “You can keep it. Time to take a trip to town now, right?” I asked, feeling antsy as my guts churned.

“Yeah, come with us,” she replied, her tone casual if not friendly. She turned to walk back towards the _Falcon,_ and Finn and Poe eyed me before they turned to do the same. I swallowed, my fists clenched from trying to hold in the physical pangs of fear I was feeling. I heard Kylo approach me from behind, felt his big hand land on my shoulder.

“Come,” he said softly to me. “We’ll talk about it later.” This time I didn’t look at him, afraid that if I saw his face while I was still reeling from witnessing his death I’d start weeping openly. I wanted to cry so bad, even if it wasn’t real. I wanted to hold that vision against Rey, despite her currently having let us tentatively off the hook for now; despite hoping it was just my brain being broken; despite the fact that my visions hadn’t proven to be prophetic just yet. I wanted to fight her, to protect him, to do whatever the fuck I had to do to prevent that vision from happening. But I didn’t know what, or how, or what it meant, and the Anakin gambit was lurking in the back of my head. So I just walked alongside him after the others, suppressing the urge to hold his hand the entire time. 

When we’d all saddled up to march down to the nearest settlement for parts, I was finally starting to calm down. My body's response seemed to have ebbed, and I was just sitting on my torrent of emotions.

“The explosion took out most of the starboard engine,” Rey was saying. I barely heard her through the fog in my head. “The parts aren’t entirely standard but I think we can save the outer shell plates, the insides might be exposed for a bit unless they carry durasteel we can cut--”

A deafening ** _BOOM_ ** cut her off, as something landed nearby with a blast of fire that sent rocks and sand ricocheting off everything nearby. Every head in the group spun around to look up at a large descending land-shuttle, where a very tall person with a very weird-looking red helmet was pointing a very fucking big blaster right at us from one of the open side-hatches. There were several other people behind them, maybe two dozen, and on the right hand side of the ship was a weird bird-lizard face I recognized.

“Pendewqell!” Kylo exclaimed, and his saber was out as quickly as mine was to deflect a smattering of blaster fire. The barrel of the big one was starting to glow again, pointing right in the middle of the fray at Rey. 

Then, everyone in the ship except the red-helmet dude leapt out of it and landed on the ground, letting out a series of snarls and shouts as they ran right towards us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's showtime, y'all!! :>
> 
> bit of a shorter chapter today but more is coming since it's the weekend <3  
(if anyone is enough of a deep-cuts Star Wars nerd to recognize Pendewqell and therefore the red-helmet boi, you get a prize. the prize is uhhh... my undying respect? lo)


	64. Chapter 64

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey asks a lot of questions.

In the firefight that followed the landing of Pendewqell and his bros, the leader of whom I found out later was a pirate named Sidon Ithano, I really got to know a few things about myself. One, that I am still really good in a crisis. I laid some bitches out in that fight, y’all. Not that anyone else was too shabby either, despite the fact that we were up against a whole hell of a lot of firepower. Kylo was my counterpoint, my anchor, my north star, like always. 

Two, that when I’m angry I do in fact fight better. The Force is mad powerful when you’re pissed off, and I was fueled by the gnawing fucking fury building in my gut, wrapping itself around the fear that I felt when I saw that vision. This ties into my last point.

Three, I learned that when you’re angry, things really can get out of hand. I say all this like I didn’t know it before, but something about experiencing all of it really sent it home in a big way. I learned this part when I ended up lifting Pendewqell up into the air with nothing but my mounting fury and slamming him bodily into the exhaust of his own ship. The old land-shuttle they were flying had fuel engines that roared heat out of spinning fans in its rear, and Ithano was flying by trying to make another pass at us with his really fucking big gun when I lost control and bodied the little shitbird-lizard into the exhaust fan. It crashed the ship, vivisected and deep fried the Ishi Tib, and then Rey and Kylo and I all ganged up on the poor pirate as he attempted to recover from being thrown off into a sand dune. By then his cronies were dead, and with the last three lightsabers in the galaxy descending upon him, the dude was toast despite putting up a really good fight.

After that, Finn and Poe had jumped on trying to find out if the shuttle came from a larger structure or craft that was nearby, since it wasn’t designed for going far or going above the atmosphere at all. BB-8 went whirring behind them. Rey was inspecting the Falcon for damages. I sat there on the entrance ramp, saber hilt in my hand, staring into nothingness. I was starting to really recall what I’d just been doing; starting to slowly feel like I lived in my own body after being thrown out of it by whatever I’d seen when I touched that fucking knife. And it did not feel good.

“Aeon?” came a deep, low voice. Kylo was approaching me, sandy and disheveled. My response was delayed, like I felt the extra blips between my brain saying ‘hello look up at him now’ and my eyes actually doing it.  _ He’s so tall,  _ I thought, because I was still pretty dissociated and my mind was pinging around like that. Our eyes met, and I saw the concern there plain on his face. “You feel far away. What’s wrong, little one?”

Something about him calling me that tripped me over into reality, and my body started to shake.

“I’m…” My throat wouldn’t open. It was like I was coming down from being in shock, and my nerves started to burn as I began to feel them again. The saber hilt fell from my hand, clattering off the ramp and into the sand. _Fuck, that's gonna be a bitch to clean later._

Immediately, Kylo came down and sat beside me. One of his arms came around my shoulders, the other lifted my knees from beneath and turned me so my legs were bent across his lap. My head and torso leaned into the expanse of his chest, and he held me there against him as I trembled. 

“I’m here,” he murmured. I wanted to start sobbing, the image of Rey’s saber impaling his chest playing over and over again in my mind.  _ I have to let this go, _ I thought.  _ I have to stop my brain from spiraling out. This isn’t real yet, and until it is there’s nothing I can do about it. This could just be my fear. _ My eyes slid shut, my arms wrapping around his muscular body to feel it there beside me, to memorize it. Just in case. I thought about the look on the Ishi Tib’s face as he rose into the air, staring in terror at me as my eyes shone wild and furious at him, seeing red.

“I just…” I stammered. “Did y-you feel it?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What’s wrong with me?” I looked up at him, asking even though I knew the answer. I felt so far away that I needed someone else to put words around the experience, to make it a reality. His dark eyes cast down towards me, a somber look there. 

“Do you remember the first time you felt it?” he asked softly. I did, of course. The time in the training hall where his own lightsaber had been pointed at his heart, the first time I got really and truly scared of myself.

“Yes.” 

“This was the same. Only you’ve grown much more powerful since then.”

“Fuck.” I took a big breath, letting the reality I’d asked for sink into my bones. I had to be really fuckin’ responsible, now. “It wasn’t like that on Mustafar.”

“You weren’t so angry then, little one. You’re angry now.” His gloved hand stroked my face. “Why?”

“I can’t,” I started, feeling my guts clench up. “I c-can’t talk about it right now.”

“Will you tell me later, then?” he asked, and his face was imploring. I nodded, which seemed to ease his concern a little. I felt my body wish it could sag into him, wish it could truly feel his sturdiness and presence. But I stayed tense. Just then, Rey rounded the corner. When she saw us like that, she paused and looked surprised. But not in a bad way, for once.

“Nothing’s damaged that wasn’t damaged before,” she said, and now her voice lacked bristles. “I guess they meant to repair the ship once they got it.” 

“That sounds about right,” Kylo agreed. “Their mistake.” She nodded, and her eyes wandered down to me.

“You alright?” she asked, and there was a tinge of actual concern in her voice. 

“Not great, honestly,” I sighed. “But I’ll be fine.”

“You were incredible, back there.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re his... apprentice?” I grinned wryly at her tone.  _ You have no idea. _

“Guilty.” She glanced between the two of us. 

“I don’t mean to pry, but--”

“It is also what it appears to be, yes,” Kylo cut her off, and I almost giggled at how strained his voice was. Like what he’d actually wanted to say was  _ please don’t point out that I’m obviously in love with this person and being nice to them right now, I don’t know how to deal with that. _

“Ah.” She didn’t seem bothered, more just surprised. I think she was mostly shook to see him acting like a person, to be honest. Talking to her a little was pulling me back into the present. Just in time to hear the sound of a speeder approaching. I felt Kylo tense, and Rey spun around with her blaster out, but then we all heard the unbelievably adorable little beeps of BB-8. 

“They brought parts with them!” shouted Poe’s voice over the whirring repulsorlift engines as they pulled up. “We got everything we need to fix ‘er up, right here!”

“Oh, that’s excellent!” Rey replied, brightening considerably.  _ Her smile is really, really pretty, _ I thought.  _ I get why Kylo had a crush on her. Among other reasons. _

“Yeah, we can get started right away,” Finn added, smiling. “When d’ya think we can get it done by?”

“Maybe three days?” Rey replied. The ex-trooper’s face fell. 

“That’s kind of a long time, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Poe added. “I mean we can help, right?”

“Sure, but there’s a lot of really delicate technical work that’s just going to take some time. It has to be done right or else we’ll end up right back where we started,” the girl said. Finally Finn and Poe both managed to notice me and Kylo, and I saw the same looks of quiet surprise on their faces. It made me wanna laugh, but that would’ve made poor Kylo even more embarrassed. 

“Can’t you help, too?” Poe asked him, finally seeming to have let his guard down at least most of the way. 

“I can’t, but Matt can.”

“Is Matt... going to?” asked Rey like she was still trying to be sure she even knew what she was talking about.

“I don’t know,” Kylo replied. “But I can start looking at the damage, at least.” He laid a kiss on my forehead, apparently no longer concerned with who watched us while he was sweet to me as long as they didn’t ask him about it. His legs shifted, so I pulled myself away from him so he could rise up to his feet. I rubbed my eyes, feeling the onset of a headache. 

“Yeah, come ‘round and I’ll show you.” Rey led the way and Kylo followed her, and I watched Finn and Poe’s faces turn into morbid curiosity as they crept behind. They really wanted to see what this whole DID thing was about, but were afraid to ask. I didn’t stand up, just sat there alone for a few minutes listening to my own breath and starting to feel marginally less shitty. I heard their muffled voices. Suddenly Kylo came back around the ship, movement a little more loose and spry, shoulders a little more slouched--

“Hey, hun,” Matt said, and I beamed at him. “They’ve fucked her right up, so I’m gonna help fix it!” His voice was excited, giddy even.

“Are you happy you get to say hi to her?” I asked, basking in his excitement.

“Maker, yes! This is gonna be really fun!” He crouched down and kissed my cheek before scampering up behind me into the ship. When I looked in front of me again, Finn and Poe were peeking around the ramp after him, faces confounded.

“Did you-- he just--?” Poe asked me, pointing up into the ship. I giggled. 

“That’s Matt. He’s the engineer, not Kylo.”

“That’s real?”

“Yes, very real.”

“Huh.” The pilot looked back up into the ship, then back at me. “So uh, you two, huh? How’s that work with uh, with both of them?”

“There’s three of them, actually, but Ben’s still a kid. I happen to be involved with Kylo and Matt both. Before you ask, no. They’re not very similar at all.” 

“Wow.” He looked at me, blinking, giving me a once over. Probably trying to figure out if that amounted to me having two boyfriends or not, which I mean it did, I guess. After a fashion.  _ He’ll figure it out eventually. _

“Thanks for helping us in that fight,” Finn chimed in, giving Poe a sidelong look that said  _ stop being rude. _

“Of course,” I shrugged. “Definitely didn’t want a bunch of pirates to scoop up this ship and run off with it, or to murder any of us, either.”

“Yeah, I appreciate that. Kylo trained you, right?” 

“Yes.” I raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Did that happen before or after…”

“We playin’ twenty questions now? What next, y’all wanna know how big his dick is? Damn!” I sassed them both, but I wasn’t actually irritated so I grinned. I was kinda having fun, finally meeting these two.

“Okay, I get it, sorry,” Finn said. Poe was looking up into the ship and then back at me once more.

“But, like how big  _ is _ it?” he asked in a low voice. My grin became very sharp.

“I can hurt you with my brain.”

“Fine, alright. I’m just kiddin’ anyway,” he said, grinning sheepishly at Finn who glared at him. He cleared his throat. “So, we gonna set up camp, or sleep in the ship?”

“There’s a house just over there, all underground,” came Rey’s voice as she rounded the corner. “We can stay there at night, with two people keeping watch on the ship. Hopefully, with Matt’s help, we’ll be ready to leave tomorrow or the next day at the latest.”

“If there’s a shower in there, I’ll be so incredibly happy,” I said to her. 

“There should be at least one,” she assured me, and I sighed. 

“Cool. Well, knowing Matt, he’ll be focused on his work for a while. So I’m gonna go check that house out.” 

“I’ll go with you. Poe, Finn, will you make sure Matt has what he needs and fetch some of the rations from the ship? There’s not bound to be much here since this place is abandoned.” Rey looked at the two men, and they looked at each other. 

“Sure,” they said, nearly in unison, like they were both dying to get a chance to talk to Matt more and see how he compared to Kylo. They scampered up into the Falcon, and I couldn’t help but grin. 

“They’re funny, those two. And lucky it’s hard to piss Matt off,” I said to the scavenger. She almost smiled at me.

“He… he seems really sweet, actually.”

“Matt’s a sweetheart.” I chuckled as I heard his voice give a distant shout from somewhere inside the ship. It sounded like excitement, probably at having figured out a problem.  _ God, he’s so wholesome and I love when he’s happy. _

“Kylo was awfully sweet, though. When he was out here with you a moment ago.” She looked at me like she wasn’t sure how to talk about this, or if she should, except that she was obviously fascinated. I plucked my saber hilt off the ground and rose to my feet with a groan.

“Kylo’s not as bad as everyone thinks he is. Including himself.” I approached her, ready to head over and into the little underground hut as the two suns started to set. “Shall we?” 

We made our way over, descended and explored a little. We found four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining area, a sitting room, a hydroponic garden with no actual plants in it, and a spare room. It was cozy, to be honest, and neither too hot nor too cold. I could tell that the entire time we scoped it out, Rey was dying to ask me a bunch of questions. Finally, as I started investigating how to make a cup of stim tea in the kitchen, she managed to pipe up. 

“So,” she said, a little too conversationally. “Luke sent you?”

“Actually, it’s more like he dragged me here, but yeah.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“He brought me to Kylo kinda... involuntarily.” _That’s one way to put it, at least._ “But, I dunno. There were a lotta reasons for me to stay and try to help. But you should ask him about it, sometime.” I grinned, leaving the difficult part of the story for the old Jedi to explain.

“What sort of reasons?” She seemed genuinely curious.

“Well, lemme just say, I didn’t expect to fall in love with him. Like, really,” I told her as I discovered something akin to a hotpot in one of the cupboards and pulled it out to see if I could figure out how to boil water in it.

“I’d imagine not,” she replied, a little icily. It looked very clear to me that, despite their little moment in  _ Episode XIII, _ Rey had never had the crush on Kylo that he’d had on her.

“Believe me, it was very uncomfortable at first.”

“So you’re not part of the First Order?” I paused for a second, because I realized that my answer would’ve been no-- except, could I really say no if I was not just Kylo’s apprentice, but also his second in command? 

“Um, technically I’m part of it. But I don’t, like, agree with it,” I replied. “I told him once very fuckin’ clearly that if I could I would burn the whole thing down. I’ll be honest with you, he didn’t seem as bothered by that as I expected.”

“Really?” She looked as surprised as she did confused. “Then why the hell is he still Supreme Leader?”

“My theory is it’s because that’s what he knows how to be. He’s scared to be less powerful than that, and he knows he’s done terrible things, so he doesn’t think he can be anything else. Or, he didn’t, at least. I’m starting to think somewhere in his head he’s beginning to wonder, though.” I met her eyes then, and I think she saw hope in me. What I really felt, of course, was this intense desire to help Kylo (and Matt, and Ben) see that he was still worthy of love, and not just from lil ol’ me. “Matt seriously doesn’t want to be Supreme Leader. He’s more like, a stay-at-home mom who likes to fix things, ride speeder bikes, and wear pretty clothes.” I laughed a little, my heart swelling up with love. “Obviously, I liked him first. And that saber I found on the ship was Matt’s, not Ben’s. Ben doesn’t have one as far as I know.”

“Does Matt want to be a Jedi?” she asked.

“No,” I replied very firmly. “No, I think Matt is… still pretty angry about some of what happened while they were at the Academy. And not very comfortable using the Force, because of how… well. You saw me earlier. When you’re angry, extreme things tend to happen.”

“I… I know,” she said quietly, looking away from me. That caught my attention.

“You run into that too, huh?”

“Yes. When the First Order kidnapped Chewie, I… lost control and blew up the transport ship, even though I thought he was on it.” She swallowed and looked back at me. My eyebrows shot up.  _ Oh, shit. Rey on that too-powerful-for-your-own-good shit, too. _ I felt myself suddenly endeared to her a lot more than I had been before.  _ At last, some character development for her! _

“Shit. That’s a lot, dude. I’m sorry. I know that feeling.” I put the hotpot thing on the table, both wanting to focus on her a little better and also totally not figuring out the weird space-contraption since my only experience so far was with machines doing all that shit for me. 

“It frightened me,” she said, looking at me like she was actually relieved she wasn’t the only one. “I… I don’t know who I am anymore, sometimes. All this, everything that’s happened… I don’t think anyone else knows me, either.”

“Hard for people to know you when you don’t know yourself,” I pointed out gently to her, trying to smile a little. She looked like that thought had never occurred to her. “You’re not on Jakku anymore, Toto. And I’m not where I used to be either. In more ways than I can possibly explain.”

“Your saber,” she began, nodding at the hilt on my belt. “I thought for sure it would be red, like his, but it’s purple. Why?”  _ Ah yes, a convenient change of subject. _

“Yanno, I’m starting to figure that out. I mean, I know how the emotions you have drive the Force. I know my whole life has been this fucking terrifying uphill battle against the things my emotions do-- to me, to other people. And I know I’ve been punished for that, even when I had no idea how to do anything about it, or that it was even happening.” I sighed, a familiar feeling of older pains passing over me. “I also know I tried real hard to work with that, to overcome it by getting better at living with it. By not letting it ruin me even if it does kinda take over every now and then, still. And letting it drive me forward, when I possibly can, instead of setting me back.” That was probably the best I’d articulated my relationship with the Force, and being bipolar, and life in general, so far. She looked at me, fascinated. 

“I thought it seemed like a blending of the light and the darkness. But I’ve never seen that before.”

“It’s happened before, actually. One of the most powerful Jedi in history, a guy called Mace Windu? He had a purple saber. I try to be like Mace when I can. He invented a whole lightsaber combat form, which I don’t think the Jedi Order was too crazy about,” I chuckled. “They weren’t real fond of his belief that you could use the darker parts of yourself to accomplish things, as long as you didn’t let them take over.”

“That sounds precarious,” she commented, brow slightly knit. “Are you sure they won’t take over anyway?”

“No,” I replied honestly, my face falling very serious. “I’m not. I have to work very hard to be sure of it, all the time. What I did out there scared me, today. But I have to deal with it myself, and make sure the people around me don’t let me forget that.” She regarded me for a moment, clearly thinking.

“Kylo isn’t someone I’d trust with that, personally.” I saw her face get a little guarded, then, like maybe she wasn’t sure she was so comfortable with us after all. 

“He wants to master his darkness. I know that about him, at least. Luke taught him to fear it and suppress it. Snoke taught him to lean into it, let it overtake him-- for his own reasons, obviously. Neither took him where he really wanted to go.” I remembered his voice from that day in the training hall.  _ We’ll find out together. _ Now her face was different, curious again, uncertain but less defensive.

“And Matt? He’s connected to the Force, I felt it. He’s connected to you, too. But if he doesn’t use it much, then what does he want?” Damn. That was a good question. More and more, I was beginning to be a little uncomfortable with how much Matt didn’t share with me about his darkness. Then again, if he didn’t know himself…

“I think he wants to ignore it until it goes away. But that’s not possible, and I think deep down he knows it. I guess we’ll see,” I replied, giving a little shrug. “I’m just trying to support him along the way. That’s all I can do.” Rey nodded, then glanced down at the hotpot.

“You want me to set that up?” she asked, looking slightly bemused. 

“Yeah, please.” I chuckled. She went about filling it up and working its little knobs until it was starting to hum its way to a boil. I heard Finn and Poe’s arguing voices from outside, and then they rambled in with a bag of rations.

“Rey, Finn thinks that BB-8 couldn’t fly a speeder, but I bet money he could! Would you bet money on him?” the pilot said as he threw the ration bag onto the table. I pulled it over and started sifting through it for stim teabags. 

“Listen, I know BB-8’s all custom built and super awesome and everything, but flying a speeder is just outside the limits of a BB unit’s programming!” protested Finn. Rey just grinned at them while she poured me a mug of hot water and I plopped my teabag into it.

“Hey, he’s learned on his own! His programming is adaptive and he’s had an awful lot to adapt to,” Poe replied.

“I do think it’s possible that droid could do anything,” Rey chimed in, shrugging at Finn. 

“Oh come on,” the ex-trooper groaned. “If you think a BB unit could fly a repulsorlift speeder just because it’s designed to help pilot shuttles, you don’t understand the difference between the two engines at all!”

“I’m gonna go grab a shower,” I murmured to Rey while the two men continued to bicker. “I’ll catch y’all later.” She nodded, clearly understanding that I was starting to get a little tired out by the constant energy between Poe and Finn, and waved me and my stim tea off.  _ They’re totally a couple, too, _ I thought with a grin as I slunk away down to one of the bathrooms and turned the little shower on. The steam started to fill the room, and I sighed. Some reliefs are pretty small, but they’re always welcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i really enjoy writing Poe and Finn. they're hilarious together xD
> 
> hope y'all are enjoying my deviations from the RoS plot, since it was a little bit of a rushed mess i'm enjoying filling it in with more character depth <3


	65. Chapter 65

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh God if nobody manages to kill me my feels definitely will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut in this chapter!

Later that night while Finn and Poe and Rey were all settling in to sleep, I wandered out to the  _ Falcon _ to see what Matt was doing. It was late enough that I figured someone might have to remind him to go to bed. I told Rey we could watch the ship, and since it was still not airborne enough for us to steal it, she agreed. But I got the feeling that after our little chat, she was feeling more interested in working together with us. 

I padded quietly up the entrance ramp, looking around in the hallways to see if I could hear or see Matt. There was a chamber that was nearby and littered with parts and tools, but it was empty. Looking over the mess, it seemed like he’d gotten finished with everything he could in this area before quitting for the day. I smiled, thinking of how cute he must be when he’s working on something.  _ Might have to come visit him tomorrow just to watch him be excited. Because I’m feeling less than excited, right now. _

Suddenly my eyes landed on something out of place. A First Order datapad was lying on the floor, its screen on. It wasn’t mine, though, so it had to belong to Matt-- and Kylo and Ben by extension. I crept over to look at it, filled with curiosity. A faint pang of guilt did strike me too, because what if this was like reading their diary? A huge invasion of privacy? But also what if I found out something, you know, important? I peered down at the most recent note.

**Fixing up the ** ** _Falcon_ ** ** is a little more tangled than I expected but should be able to do it. Maybe by the end of the day tomorrow! I know you might not be happy to be back on this thing, but I missed it. I mean, it makes me sad too, but that’s okay. Thanks for asking for my help.**

**Aeon seems okay by the way. I think they’re talking more to the others and maybe getting them to like us more :^) **

**-M**

_ Okay, that was cute. Trademark Matt.  _ I had no idea if Kylo wanted the other three to like us, but I knew Matt wanted things to work out and probably felt that would be a lot more likely if friendliness was part of the equation. Which I tended to agree with. I hoped faintly that Rey was liking us more, at least. The boys seemed to follow her lead, in general, and her relationship with Kylo was the most convoluted, so we needed her on board.

Tentatively, I reached out to the screen to scroll back up and look for other notes. I didn’t know what I was looking for-- maybe something nice about me, or maybe something I really needed to know that I didn’t already for Project Redemption Arc. Probably both. I scrolled up really fast, the text blurring, wondering if I’d land on something further back.

Then, when it slowed, my eyes caught something  _ very _ far back.

**The new apprentice is learning more. I think Ben might’ve come out today. We should keep an eye on him.**

**-K**

**I’ll do my best to keep him from pushing too much. He’s restless, though. I think he likes Aeon as much as I do, because they’re nice! And clearly good friend material. You should try liking your apprentice too, sometime. **

**-M**

**My apprentice doesn’t like ME.**

**-K**

For some reason, that made me chuckle. It was iconic Kylo behavior, at least early on when I met him. I scrolled a little farther, stopping at random places that caught my eye.

**Um, apparently Aeon didn’t actually know about us… but now they do. Sorry?**

**-M**

**That’s strange. I thought they could tell. It’s alright. Better that they know, I guess, since one of us is terrible at listening to orders.**

**-K**

**Give less terrible orders and maybe I’ll listen!**

**-M**

Now I actually gave a soft laugh. Matt being sassy to Kylo was a little jolt of joy to my soul. I kept scrolling. Sometimes there were longer gaps in the time-stamps between the notes, like they’d communicated less.

**Ben pushed out today during training. All the way out. I don’t know how long exactly. I’m worried about him. **

**-K**

**Maybe you shouldn’t be a dick to your own apprentice. Ben likes Aeon and it makes sense for him to want to help. But I’ll keep trying with him anyway, because I do agree we have to keep him safe.**

**-M**

**Maybe my apprentice is right. Maybe I’m just an asshole. But I’m trying to keep us safe.**

**-K**

That… made me kinda sad. And confirmed the story that he just felt like he was a bad person, or had to be one. I really, really hoped that now he had started to truly change his mind. There was a bigger gap between the timestamps for the next message.

**Aeon’s not feeling well. They ate a Namana candy that I gave them a while back. Don’t fucking yell at me, it was supposed to be something fun. I told them to be careful but I think they are really, really upset because they’re forgetting their own memories of home. You probably won’t read this before you start, but on the off chance you do, I think you should be nice to them in your lesson today. They said they’ve never been planetside, so I looked at your schedule. I was thinking of taking them to Kaller? Just for the day? Please?**

**-M**

**I didn’t read your note until tonight. But they showed tremendous potential today. I hope they are feeling better when you see them. As for Kaller, absolutely not. My apprentice should remain safely on the ship. I will not argue with you about this.**

**-K**

**But… I really like them, Kylo. Will you let me have this one thing? Please? I haven’t been out this much in so long. I’m feeling better finally. I want to have some fun, and I think Aeon should too. When they’re happy, they’re better at lessons, right? And they need a bunch of stuff anyway, they have almost no clothes and I want to help them get a necklace for their crystal so they don’t lose it. I won’t let anything happen to them, I swear! You know I CAN switch out anyway, right? I’m not afraid to. But if you say it’s okay, we can make sure we’re back in time for whatever you have to do! Can we do that? Please please please?**

**-M**

**I’ll think about it.**

**-K**

I chuckled again, rolling my eyes. I scrolled a little farther, past a few notes where Kylo wasn’t as rude to Matt about what had happened on that trip as you might expect. Probably because of the awkward morning in the shuttle he’d been so embarrassed about. 

**I’m so bad at this. I can’t ask Aeon out on a date. I’m so so so bad at this! What do I do?**

**-M**

**Just say the words “So would you like to go on a date sometime?” and see what happens. It’s simple. Or kiss them and see how that goes.**

**-K**

**I’m not just gonna kiss them without asking. That’s rude. But asking is really hard okay! Anyway. I’ll work on it. Thanks.**

**-M**

_ That’s so fucking cute. Look at Kylo being supportive of Matt.  _ I smiled and kept with my random scrolling until the first sentence of a note grabbed my attention.

**Do you think Aeon is starting to like me more? I’ve been trying to show them more respect. Because I do respect them. I always did, even before what happened on Dagoba. I didn’t realize how bad I was at showing it to pretty much everyone, including you, and I’m sorry. I feel like an asshole for a lot of things lately. I made them my heir, before we went. And gave them say over what happens to Hux when we interrogate him tomorrow. Provided I don’t kill him myself for trying to hurt them again.**

**Thanks for doing what you could down there.**

**-K**

That made me pause.  _ Do you think Aeon is starting to like me more? Because I do respect them. I always did.  _ My breath caught in my throat, despite the fact that I knew very well now how much Kylo respected me. It was something, though, to see it from his own point of view long before I really saw it for myself. To see him being a little insecure, a little worried, apologizing to Matt for being such a dick. And the first time he’d used my name in a note. My heart softened.

**I think Aeon wants to like you, to be honest. I think they want you to be a good teacher and to learn from you. I think they want to respect you! Once you start to show it more, you’ll see it back. I really think so. You don’t have to be mean just because you’re the Supreme Leader. I mean what you say goes now, right?**

**-M**

The next couple of notes were Matt confirming our successful date, which Kylo was very sweet about; then all about Palpatine, but then I caught one that Kylo had added after a long note that was all business.

**I want you to know I’m really happy for you and Aeon. I think they are truly one of the most incredible people I know and I’m honored to train them and happy you get to finally spend time with someone who is so good to you. I want them to be with me on this journey as my apprentice, though. I know it’s their choice, in the end, and I’m trying to respect that. Please don’t think I’m being reckless and tell them it’s a bad idea. I know I act like an asshole sometimes. I know you’re not going to be happy about my plan to deal with Palpatine and it’s possible Aeon won’t either. But I would never let anything happen to them if I could possibly help it. I would die first. Not that that makes you feel any better, I’m sure, but I’m serious. **

**Also, you should show them the window in our room. Especially tomorrow night. I promise you they’ll like it.**

**-K**

I stared at the letters on the screen.  _ I would die first. _ That was the kinda thing that, back home, was terrifying and codependent as hell. But here in a place where you really might actually fuckin’ die… it was terrifying for a totally different reason. I was just surprised to see it, I guess, and it sank deep and serious into my heart. The next note was Kylo asking Matt to check on me when I’d gone dark for three days, and Matt replying with more anger than I’d seen from him about the subject. I didn’t read them properly. I didn’t want to. But I did notice that Kylo hadn’t given a rebuttal, hadn’t tried to validate his choice to keep me on the  _ Supremacy _ regardless of if I wanted to be there or not. Which most likely meant he’d been ashamed. Matt had left a note again instead, later.

**I know you fell for Aeon. I can tell. That’s why you didn’t want them to leave, just as much as the other reasons. That’s why you said you’d die to protect them. I know you. Even though you’ve been different lately. I think them not putting up with your shit has been good for you. And I’m not upset about your feelings! But you better be good to them and let it be their choice. About training, about Palpatine, about you… all of it. **

**-M**

**It will always be Aeon’s choice. From now on. About everything. I’m sorry for getting scared the way I did. I was just surprised by what they said, I think. I knew as soon as I said they couldn’t leave that I made a mistake. I don’t think I deserve to train them. I’m just not doing anything right. I know you want them to have their freedom too, because maybe you know better how to love someone than I do. And I crossed your trust just as much as theirs. I won’t do it again.**

**-K**

**Thank you for saying that. If Aeon can forgive you, I can. You’re ridiculously lucky they’re your apprentice, nerf herder. **

**-M**

**I hope to live up to them being my apprentice. Thank you. **

**-K**

Now, I got a little teary-eyed. This had to be right around when I’d agreed to stay-- probably just before. Maybe I should’ve been mad that Kylo never really apologized to me directly, but his indirect apologies were enough for me. I sighed and flicked past more notes.

**I’m sorry for making you check in on Aeon a while ago instead of doing it myself. I didn’t realize what was really happening. I was being an asshole. But I’m still trying to be better.**

**Also, it did happen, finally. I wasn’t sure it ever would, even though I wanted it to. I thought they’d say no, and possibly smack me across the face, but they didn’t. They said they respected me too, which I’m not sure I’ve earned. But I’m grateful.**

**-K**

**If they say you earned it, I believe them. :^)**

**-M**

I smiled softly. Matt was really trying to be supportive of his alter’s struggles to change or think differently than he used to, and I realized in that moment even more clearly why I loved him so much. Then there were notes about Hux’s escape. Then a very long gap in the timestamps.

**You’ll read this later I’m sure, after you talk to Aeon again, but what you did was incredible. You did it, Matt. You healed someone with the Force. I knew as soon as Mitaka told me what had happened. I know you’re afraid but you did something amazing! I don’t think I could’ve done it. Thank you, thank you so much. You saved Aeon’s life. I can never ever repay you for that. **

**Please remember this happened when you feel afraid again. That you can do this. We might need you in the future. I believe in you. I trust you. Remember that.**

**-K**

Seeing Kylo encouraging Matt flooded my heart with love. I sighed again and slid the text back to its most recent message, satisfied with what I’d read. My tears were gone, but I felt like I’d relived the past several weeks all over again from Matt and Kylo’s point of view. There was something so vindicating about watching Kylo’s progress in miniature. I wished I’d seen more about Matt’s feelings, but he kept things buttoned up even with Kylo, it seemed. Probably more than anyone, he hid them from himself.

I heard a sound from one of the other rooms then, and I rose to my feet to quickly leave the incriminating crouch I was in by the datapad. Snooping around down another little hall, I saw the room where the space-monster-chess table was. A visceral pang of lust struck me just from the memory of what had happened the last time I was in this part of the ship, and I shivered. Then I saw a figure closing the hatch on some compartment or another nearby.

“Matt?” I asked.

“No, little one, it’s me,” Kylo said, turning around and stepping towards me. “Matt’s done working for today. I wanted to get back out front and make sure everything was okay. Sounds like you’ve got the other three feeling more inclined to cooperating, hm?”

“Seems like it,” I confirmed, shrugging. “We’ll see. Just, yanno, behave yourself.”

“Are you giving me orders now?” His eyes were burning into mine. “The last time you and I were in this room, it was a very different story.”  _ Oh, I guess I’m not the only one who’s reminiscing. Shit. _

“Yanno, you and I have guard duty on the  _ Falcon _ tonight,” I murmured, looking up at him. 

“Oh?” 

“We could do a little reenactment.” He raised an eyebrow.

“You think you can be quiet, this time around?” Now one hand, which was freshly washed clean of all Matt’s engineering duties and their related dirt, came up to stroke my neck. My entire lower half clenched. 

“Sure, I can be quiet.”

“I don’t believe you, little one. With the things I’m imagining doing to you right now, I don’t think you could stand it.” Now my whole damn body clenched.  _ Holy shit. But... that sounds like a challenge. _

“You might have to  _ make _ me,” I suggested, and watched his eyes blaze. “But then again, you’re used to makin’ me do lotsa things, aren’t you?” The fingers slipped up under my jaw, thumb on the other side, holding my face up closer to his.

“I sense unruliness from you tonight, Aeon. Is it the memory of last time? Did you enjoy being punished?” he cooed before he pushed up against my windpipe, not entirely cutting off my air but certainly minimizing it.  _ Fuck fuck fuck. _ My eyelids fluttered as I stared at him.

“Maybe,” I wheezed. 

“Seems a pity you’ve done nothing to merit punishment tonight, then.”

“Try me.” He pushed against my neck with his hand now, his other hand landing on my shoulder to direct my stumbling legs back towards the game table. When my ass bumped against it, he pulled me around and bent me over it. 

“We’ll start with the simplest lesson, then,” he said, hand on the back of my neck. “What do you do to show your respect?”

“Oh, I can think of a couple different things.” His hand slipped under my waistband, pulled my trousers down over my ass. He ran his fingernails over one cheek and I squirmed and let out a little groan.

“Already noisy,” he tutted. “That’s going to be your biggest struggle tonight, isn’t it? Trying not to tell everyone who’s fucking you.”

“I’m not even loud yet,” I complained. He smacked the shit outta my ass, and I yelped.

“That so?” He ran his palm over the stinging skin, giving little pats. Every time he did, I tensed up waiting on another slap. “We’ll see how long that lasts.” But instead of slapping me again, he towed me up to standing and pressed his hips into my exposed skin. I could feel his arousal already through his clothes. “Take off your shirt and cowl.”

“What, this?” I asked, running my hands over my torso against the fabric of my shirt as I leaned back onto him. I brought them up to my chest, running them over my nipples. 

“Don’t test me, little one, I haven’t even touched you yet,” he growled into my ear, sending tremors of heat through me. I pulled the cowl off, but I slid my hands up under my shirt against my skin. 

“Won’t you help me?” I asked, smirking.

“You want my help?” Suddenly his hands were around my waist, slipping up under the shirt, and his nails were digging in. I gasped, and grimaced at the sparkles of pleasure and pain. He pushed against me, dragging his nails with him, sliding his hands up my back and tugging the shirt along with them. I leaned forward, sucking in a breath at the trails he left before jerking the garments off and flinging them away. Now he pushed with flat palms against my shoulder blades, pressing my chest down into the table again, pressing himself back up against my rear. Slowly he dragged his nails back down again and I held in a moan. I could feel his eyes watching the marks he made rise up and quickly fade. Then he scratched me down the backs of my arms, and I couldn’t hold in a pathetic little whimper this time. “You like that, little one?”

“Yes,” I said, shutting my eyes. He started his nails back up at the back of my neck this time and dragged them down my spine all the way to where his black pants were pressed up against me. Shuddering, I ground my ass back into his hips.

“You do like a little pain, don’t you?” He seemed to be considering this. “I assume you’ll tell me when you don’t like it anymore?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll let ya know,” I assured him wryly. I heard him reach over somewhere and pick something up, and I tried to turn my head and torso to see what it was. But his hand clamped down on the back of my neck again and pinned me.

“No no, little one. You’ll move when I tell you to. Do you understand?”

“Fine,” I grumbled. His nails dug into my neck.

“Excuse me?”

“I said  _ fine. _ ” Suddenly something cold and hard and very small pressed against my shoulder blade and started to scratch me much more sharply than his nails had. It ran a slow, electrifying line down my back, and I writhed beneath his grasp. Instead of asking me again, he then just placed it against my other shoulder blade and did the same thing. I gasped and let out soft little  _ ah ah ah _ sounds as another achingly slow jolt ran through me. His nails were unlikely to have left any marks, but there would definitely be little red lines from whatever that was tomorrow. And I fucking loved it. 

“I could write it on your skin,” he mused. “Maybe you’d remember it then.” And sure as hell he just started making an S shape on my back. I was fast starting to lose the line between pleasure and pain, feeling both at once, all the stimulation of my nerve endings keying me up more and more. I felt him make an I shape, and then just as he reached the tail of the R where it crossed paths with another scratch--

“Yes, sir,” I said weakly, shuddering. The implement, whatever it was, withdrew and was replaced by the enormous flat palm of his hand, swiping soothing strokes against the tingling paths he’d just traced.

“Good, little one. You’ll learn yet.” Without warning he lifted his hand and brought it down in a strong, hard thud that sent warm heat blossoming over me, especially along where he’d been scratching. I sucked in air, delighted by the change in sensations. Honestly thuds like that almost feel like they’re knocking tension out of you, like the broad pressure of them is nearly relaxing. To me, at least. “Turn over.” 

I obeyed, laying my back on the table, and he pulled off my pants unceremoniously before pushing himself between my legs where they dangled off. His eyes roved over my torso before he put one finger on my sternum and then scratched its nail all the way to my belly button. 

“Fuck,” I hissed.

“There’s that dirty mouth, at long last,” he said, smirking down at me. He was holding some metal rod thing in his hand; it looked like it was probably used to solder engine bits together. He rubbed one of my nipples, causing me to moan softly. Then he lowered the instrument in his hand to my collar bone and I tensed. But he never stopped touching my nipple, so there were flutters of pleasure rolling through me even as he began to move it. I jerked; this side of my body was much more delicate than my back. I felt my wrists go flying above my head onto the seat behind me, pinned there by the Force. He continued his line, drawing a lazy, curly path across the front of my torso. 

“Shhhiit,” I exhaled, eyes sparkling. The sensations were blurring together again, the slightly painful scratch and the pleasurable caress. 

“Watching your lovely skin welt up so red and beautiful for me is truly breathtaking,” he cooed. He pressed himself against my cunt which was hot with desire. 

I breathed deep and even, looking at him, watching with mounting anticipation as he took the metal thing and drew a line from one of my thighs up over my belly and ribs. I squealed when he neared my other nipple. “Hush,” he commanded. I bit my lip, heavy-lidded eyes still trained on him. That smirk curled back onto his face. “Do you like this as much as I do, little one?” Before I could answer, his hand descended between my legs, one finger swiping up the slick there.

“Fuck-- yes,” I replied, clenching as he brushed my clit.

“Clearly.” He rubbed my dampness between his thumb and forefinger. “Is it the pain you like, or is it being bound like this that makes you so wet?”

“It’s you,” I murmured, pushing my hips against his seeking some friction on my clit which was starting to stiffen profoundly. “ _ You _ do this to me.” 

“Who?” He slapped a nipple, and I squeaked. But I didn’t miss the smile that sparkled behind his eyes.

“You do, sir!”

“You know what I want to hear, apprentice.” He slapped the other one.

“Fuck! My master does this to me!” 

“Your master does what to you?” he asked, slipping his fingers back down to hold them on either side of my clit, unmoving.

“My master makes me this wet!” I whimpered, wriggling against his touch.

“No matter what I do to you, you’re always so ready. Ready to be filled up, ready to cum, even ready to beg. After some persuasion.” His fingers dipped low, circled my entrance, and I bucked my hips to no avail. “So desperate. It’s intoxicating to watch such a fierce creature want me this badly.” 

“I could make  _ you _ this desperate if you’d let me,” I threatened coyly. I saw a spark in his eyes and the hand that wasn’t at my cunt clamped onto my thigh.

“Perhaps I’ll let you try one day, apprentice.”

“I’ve learned from the best.” He slipped two fingers inside me then, and I moaned as he pushed them up against my g-spot and moved them in circles. 

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he crooned, watching me intently as I panted and my muscles started to tighten around him. His thumb started to rub my clit, and I gasped. I wasn’t watching closely enough to notice him press the metal tool he’d had before against my thigh again until he started dragging it up my skin, and I yelped.

“Fuck!” I cried, but it felt  _ incredible. _

“Already starting to get too loud, little one,” he warned me as the line he was scratching wound around my belly button and vanished. The mounting sensations were starting to twist together, to push against my belly. I whimpered as I felt myself start to clamp up--

Of course, he pulled his hand away just before I could reach the edge.

“God fucking dammit,” I groaned. “This again?”

“If you learned your lesson, perhaps we wouldn’t have to return to it so often.” I glared at him, pretty sure it was obvious on my face that as much as it drove me nuts, I also never wanted to learn that lesson. I felt the Force drop my wrists suddenly. “Stand up.” 

Obeying, I rose to my feet, our bodies still close. I stared up at him, and his look wasn’t as feral as usual. It was calm, completely self-assured, and hungry. And insanely fucking attractive. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for his next order. 

“Take off my clothes,” he said. That order was unfortunately one I was excited to follow, as I ran my hands up his torso to the zipper of his jacket, pulling it down delicately. I tugged the thing off his shoulders, and pushed the tank top he’d elected to wear beneath it up over the magnificent muscles of his chest until he pulled it over his arms and discarded it. I gave him another hungry look as my fingers found the clasp of his trousers. 

Before I could make much headway there, though, his hand came up to grip my chin and he leaned down to take my lips in an urgent, wet kiss. His tongue snaked around my mouth, pressed down onto mine, and I moaned into it. He took my bottom lip in his teeth and bit it almost, but not quite, hard enough to break the skin. Somehow I managed to fumble his fly open and reach down to touch his incredibly hard length-- and he grabbed my arm, pulled it away. I whined.

“Greedy, aren’t you?” he murmured. “Not yet, little one.” I pouted at him, and he ran his tongue over my lip. He did allow me to start pushing his trousers off, though. 

“But aren’t you ready for me?” I said, intent on continuing to pout. Now his eyes were like puddles of black with embers burning deep within them.

“I’m always ready for your perfect little cunt, apprentice. But you still have a lesson to learn,” he said back in a husky voice. He stepped out of his pants, leaving them in a puddle on the floor. Then, without any kind of warning, he stooped to lift me and set me standing on the little table, pushing my legs apart with his hands. He buried his nose in the crevice of my thigh, inhaling obscenely. “Turn around.” So I turned, and let him run his hands all over my ass.

“Shit,” I breathed when his tongue lapped slowly at my entrance, hearing him groan into me. His big hands were reaching up, pushing at my back to bend me over so he could access me better. My heart started to race when he grabbed my arms, pulling them to either side of my legs and forcing me to stay bent very far forward.  _ He’s lucky I have pretty open hips. _ I moaned as he continued to swirl his tongue against me, inside me.

“You taste exquisite,” he murmured, barely pulling his lips away as he did. I whimpered when he finally moved to my clit, suckling at it almost too gently. 

“Kyloooo,” I whined as the blood started to rush to my head. But his tongue carried on, teasing in its lack of pressure or urgency. I wriggled my hips, and he just jerked even harder on my arms. He was building up the tension inside me dramatically slowly, on the heels of the last time he’d teased me, and it was already starting to make me feel desperate. When my leg muscles started to shake, he pulled away. “Noooo!”

“Don’t you want me to fuck your little ass with my tongue, apprentice?” His voice was condescending, mocking. His hands slapped my ass cheeks and pulled them apart, breath hot on the puckered opening there. My hands landed on the table to support the rest of me, and I felt the Force clamp down to keep them there.

“Ohmigod,” I complained, not even sure what I was complaining about.

“I asked you a question,” he growled, digging nails into my flesh.

“Yes  _ please _ fuck my ass with your tongue, sir.”

“That’s better.” And he descended, wet and warm, where he’d promised to. I moaned as the nerve endings there woke up and sent tremors through me, his tongue working its way inside me as his fingers pulled my cheeks farther and farther apart. I gasped when he started moving his head, pushing that soft yet powerful muscle deeper into me and pulling it out again. 

“Fuck! That feels so good, sir!” I was rewarded for this outburst by one of his hands coming forward between my legs towards my mouth, pushing two salty digits in, and holding me by my jaw and tongue as his head moved faster and another finger swirled around my opening once again, teasing.

“Much as I appreciate your feedback, little one, I told you to be quiet,” he reminded me as he pulled me off the table and into his arms, releasing my hands from the table. I blushed, feeling suddenly very small. 

“I told you to make me,” I reminded him. He narrowed his eyes at me in a predatory, completely thrilling way before he laid me on my back on the lounge seat, head dangling over the edge of it. 

“I can oblige.” He stepped up to lay his cock against my cheek. He didn’t bother giving me an order, but opened my mouth manually with his hands to slip the tip of it inside. I managed to lick a pearl of precum off it before he pushed it deep into my throat. I hummed as he began to rut, but when I felt the scratchy tool along my hip bone I tried unsuccessfully to let out a yelp. “Certainly does seem to help, doesn't it?” he rasped smugly.

My legs and arms were trapped again, knees bent and splayed out. I felt his hand reach down and start to rub against my clit, and let out a series of pathetic little moans around his cock. His fingers teased me, switching to running between my opening and my clit without ever touching either, and I tried to wriggle in protest. He growled before he pulled his length out of my mouth, and I gasped and started to let out a noise-- but his other hand clapped over my mouth.

“You’re not earning your orgasm very quickly, apprentice,” he said, continuing to tease my cunt mercilessly. I shut my eyes, straining against the hold on my limbs. “At this rate, you may not get one.” Now, my eyes flew open and stared up desperately at him, shaking my head and making muffled sounds of protest. “What’s that?” he asked, pulling his hand away from my face.

“Please let me cum sir!” I pleaded. “Please don’t be cruel!”

“I’m not being cruel. I made the rules very clear, and you haven’t been abiding by them.” He gave my clit a slap, and I winced and managed just barely to hold in a noise. Now he released the Force’s hold on me and hauled me back up so he could throw me over his shoulder, slapping my ass real fuckin’ hard in the process, and carry me into the cargo hold. There were a few large crates there, and he promptly laid me down on my back on top of one. 

“Sir--”

“Hold your legs open,” he ordered, and I grabbed my feet and pulled them out. “Wider.” His eyes were molten, their gaze dripping over me as I loosened my hips and bent my legs back farther, splayed them wider, the most incredibly vulnerable pose a sub can be in really. “Very good. Now keep quiet, little one. I won’t tell you again.”

“Y-yes sir,” I muttered, starting to clench with anticipation. His fingers tapped against the skin of my thighs before he raked his nails down them. I managed to do nothing but take a deep breath as my skin sparkled. Then his fingers danced around my cunt, sending shivers through me. My face contorted as I held in frustrated whimpers.

Finally he plunged a finger inside me, curling back towards himself, and a very, very quiet little moan escaped on an exhale as my eyes rolled back. Apparently this was quiet enough for him. He continued to dig at my g-spot, adding a second finger, watching my face as I tried to keep hushed while the pressure and pleasure that built up was even more intense from all his godforsaken teasing. When he added a thumb to my clit I jerked violently, but still managed to just keep breathing instead of making a sound.

“Mm, you’re trying  _ so _ hard to be good,” he cooed. “You want to cum so badly, don’t you?” I nodded furiously, hips bucking against him. He added a third finger, strokes still slow and even with his thumb, and I suppressed most of a squeak. “Soooo close.” I nodded, eyelids fluttering. The edge was starting to rise up, sharp and explosive, and he picked up the pace on my clit.

“Fuck!” I yelped, then my eyes flew wide open as I realized my mistake. His thumb vanished, his fingers went deathly still inside me. 

“Such a pity,” he said, leaning over me. “You nearly made it, little one.”

“Siiiir,” I whimpered, less loudly than I normally would, to my credit. 

“How much can you take, I always wonder?” His fingers moved just a little inside me, and I clenched around him. He pulled them out and little stifled sobs escaped my throat, but my mouth stayed clamped shut in an effort to make them quieter. “Your clit is so swollen and tender. I could make you break, like this. I could just push you and push you and push you until you were ready to do  _ anything _ for it,” he said. I shook my head violently, even though part of me did wonder just how much I could actually take.  _ Maybe I’ll let him find out sometime. _

“Please, sir,” I whispered, my lower lip crumpling. 

“Poor thing,” he murmured, one hand reaching out to cup my face. “So needy and so wet and so pitiful. Should I help you stay quiet, would you like that?” I nodded, and he bent over me to place a kiss-- sensual, dominant-- on my lips. Then he turned around and walked out of the hold, and I realized then that my arms and legs were bound together by thin air. 

I felt my heart race, panic starting to hit me; but he returned with one of his leather gloves in his hand. Approaching the crate, pressing his cock against my incredibly sensitive cunt, he reached up and held it in front of my face. 

“Open.” I stared at him as I complied, and leather hit my tongue as he stuffed almost the whole thing in. “Good little thing. Now, would you like me to fuck you?” I nodded, and he reached down to massage my inner thigh muscles. With totally intentional and profoundly upsetting slowness, he began to ease the head of his cock inside me. When my hips bucked, he stopped and looked up at me sharply, eyes boring holes in mine. I knew what he wanted, so I stilled. Satisfied, he resumed his painstakingly slow pushing. He pressed against my g-spot, and I jerked involuntarily and moaned around the glove in my mouth. He stopped again, and his nails dug into my thighs. 

“I will tease you all night, apprentice, if you force me to.” He pulled his cock out of me and I nearly sobbed. Instead he wrapped one of his huge hands around it, stroking lazily and rubbing the head of it against my clit. I sucked in air as the sensations fluttered through me, but I was too far from the cliff to approach it at his languid pace and light, slippery touch. My head lolled back, tears filling my eyes. This caused me not to see him bend down and push his tongue inside me, and I bucked slightly with surprise. He lapped up against the spot he knew would make me start to clench up. My breaths were huge and ragged coming in and out of my nose, and he dragged his tongue up my slit to the bud of my clit which was definitely exactly as swollen and tender as he’d said. My chest was flushing bright red, my whole body starting to catch up. He just barely suckled the bundle of nerves, not pushing the hood of it back to cause any more direct contact but letting slow, subtle waves of electricity ripple through me. Tiny groans were muffled by the glove as my legs started to shake. Finally the edge was looming again, closer and closer and so fucking massive I couldn’t even think about how intense it was going to be--

He stood up, leaving me dangling yet again, and I couldn’t help it anymore and let out a ragged, angry scream around the glove, trying to kick my legs against the pressure of the Force that bound them tightly. His hand came up and gripped my chin harshly, and his black eyes speared mine.

“You will be silent, you will be still, and you will keep your eyes on mine. Do you understand?” His voice was approaching a feral snarl, possibly from his own arousal which had been just as postponed as mine had. I swallowed the spit that was pooling around the leather in my mouth and nodded as much as I could in his iron grip. I felt his cock pressing against my cunt again, slipping along it, head pressing into me. My eyelids fluttered but didn’t close when he pushed in, still going at a maddeningly slow pace, watching as muscles all along my body and in my face clenched to attempt to contain the overwhelming sensations that were blown wildly out of proportion by his intense, relentless buildup. My belly went up and down dramatically as I breathed; the only thing that was helping me not just McFreakin Lose It. Finally he was sheathed inside me, and I saw his face contort with the feeling. 

“You’re so fucking perfect, my disobedient little apprentice,” he growled, now slowly pulling himself out again. “I love making you listen. You wouldn’t even let yourself be subdued by just anyone, would you?” I shook my head-- I mean, it was true. His next thrust was faster and very hard, and my eyes flew wide open. He watched me ravenously, held himself still before pulling back out slowly again. “You certainly wouldn’t love it this much either, isn’t that right?” I nodded, and he slammed into me again. A tear fell down my cheek as my body tightened around his length, clamping my limbs in with all my might. Then he drew it out, breaths getting deeper and harder, and slammed it in once more. My eyes almost fluttered shut, but I pulled them wide open again as soon as I realized. He smirked, noting my efforts, and then his thrusts finally became steady, though still gut-wrenchingly slow. 

I was as still as I could possibly be as my muscles started to shake all over, breathing fraught with the ballooning pleasure that pushed and pushed against me from my core. His other hand pressed against my clit but didn’t move, and my whole pelvic floor jerked inside the straining cage of my hips. 

“I fucking adore watching you. I love watching your soul leave your body when you cum on my cock. I want to see you so full of pleasure-- fuck-- so destroyed by me, that you can’t speak or see or hear anything. Only feel me inside you--  _ feel-- _ what I would give you, feel how much-- argh-- I cherish you, how perfect and beautiful-- and rare you are.” Now my heart was swelling up, breaking apart and pooling into my guts, eyes flooding with tears as I stared at him and his cock pushed hard and slow and deep inside me. His fingers started to softly rub my poor battered clit, his pace picking up. I clamped my teeth down on the glove in my mouth as my nerve endings roared back to life, catching like wildfire that screamed out all over my body.

“I-- would  _ die _ for you, little one-- shit-- I would-- kill anything-- to protect you-- I want--  _ rgh!-- _ to wash every-- every unworthy thing-- that’s  _ ever _ touched you-- from your body-- want you to feel how sacred-- your cunt is-- in my hand--  _ fuck--  _ in my mouth-- around-- around my cock--”

There was something fueling the fire in his eyes that was bubbling up from deeper than it had before, not just the love he’d already confessed to. We were so intimately connected through the Force I could feel whatever it was starting to seep into my awareness, puddling in with the almost crushing intensity of the orgasm that was starting to build to frantic proportions inside me. He bent down closer to my face, hand still gripping my chin, thrusts finally approaching something like a normal speed even as he could no longer pull all the way out of me at that angle. I was mesmerized, totally lost in the sea of sensations and feelings, ready and willing to drown there. 

“Stay-- fuck!-- stay with me-- Aeon-- please--” I realized with shock that there were tears in his eyes even as he growled and panted. “Let-- shit!--  _ fuck!-- _ let me protect you-- let me-- let me love you--” Now his face was inches from mine, eyes still holding my gaze with desperation, with adoration, with  _ fear.  _ “If you-- if you can love me-- please--”

A tiny, high-pitched little sob leaked from my vocal chords into the muffling cushion in my mouth, his stuttering fingers on my clit sending shocks through me as his hips finally took a breakneck pace. His breaths were ragged as he barely suppressed sobs of his own, and some part of my mind was appalled at his sudden and intense emotions that poured out into me now, lost in the swelling of my climax that teetered right on the edge.

“Aeon-- fuck--  _ fuck-- _ I-- I  _ love _ you--”

The orgasm that toppled over me like a landslide turned my entire body into a convulsion, clamping down around him, cum issuing from me with a wet slapping sound. He let out a low, guttural noise as his orgasm crashed into mine, eyes going dark and intent as they fell into my empty gaze. I saw nothing anymore, felt only the indescribable pleasure and relief that wracked me from my very bones-- and the shuddering depth of his pleas, the liquified warmth of his heart as it splintered and broke over me with an outpouring of emotion like I’d never felt before. Tears poured down my face, my body shook and jerked and convulsed, and my eyes rolled back into my head.

I felt him go still and slump over me, his hand releasing my chin and stroking my head as his nose pressed into my cheek, gasping, tears wet on his face and smearing into mine. The Force was no longer holding me, but my legs just hung in the air and trembled uncontrollably as I lay there in the waves washing over me. Somehow my shaking hands found his hair, tangled themselves up in it as I panted. 

Spit was pooling at the corners of my mouth as my breaths rasped into my lungs, teeth still leaving their imprints in the leather. I felt him nuzzle my cheek and wipe tears off it with his plush lips; finally he gently tugged the glove out of my mouth. I laid there with eyes incapable of focusing as he lifted his head and gently wiped spit and tears off my face with his big hand, stroking my temple with his thumb. I didn’t try to speak, didn’t do anything except let him touch me gently as I floated in the slowly ebbing tide of whatever had just happened. I mean could you even call that an orgasm? Wasn’t it astronomically bigger than just one of those?

Finally, with so much careful tenderness, he shifted my limp form to wrap an arm around my waist. My legs curled around him of their own volition, proof some extant form of basic instinct still remained in my otherwise dumbfounded body. He lifted me off the crate and slipped his other arm under my bum as he stood and carried me, wrapped around him like a koala, into the ship’s head. Once again he washed my face with damp fingers, even tried his best to reach under me and wipe cum off my innermost thighs. He was silent, probably shaken by his own vulnerability, taking one of the little towels to dry me and then himself off a little. Then he carried me, still dazed and overwhelmed, into one of the triple bunks. He sat down on one of the beds and wrapped his arms around me, burying his head in my shoulder.

My eyes closed, sinking into him as I sat on his lap like that. I wasn’t sleepy-- how could I be sleepy with all that energy and emotion still coursing through me? But I felt myself slowly beginning to return to something I vaguely remembered as reality. Only it didn’t feel less real than wherever I was before, just profoundly more immediate.

“Kylo,” I whispered into his neck, and his breath hitched under me. His arms held me tighter. 

“Yes, Aeon?” he asked me, just as quietly, the only time he’d ever sounded small. 

“I love you back.” He shook, nuzzled my neck.

“You don’t have to stay,” he murmured, and I could hear the sorrow in his voice. “I just-- I want you to. That’s all.”

“I know.” I felt a pang in my heart of something awful, the memory of my question to Luke such a long time ago.  _ Will I even want to go home? _ It felt like I wasn’t allowed to, like I  _ couldn’t _ just give up the ghost and stay here. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I had no choice but to leave at the end of this story.  _ But isn’t that bullshit? Isn’t that the whole point of what you’ve been trying to learn? That you have a choice, after all? _

“You always know.” Finally he pulled his head back upright, and looked at me with watery, liquid amber eyes. I could tell he was afraid, but I was starting to think it wasn’t just of me leaving. I stroked his cheek with a trembling hand.

“I want to stay,” I confessed, terrified of my own desire in that moment.

“Will you?” His gaze held mine, hoping for an answer.

“We’ll see if I can.” He nodded, not quite happy but not quite hopeless either. My lip crumpled as I remembered, suddenly and viscerally, the vision of his death. I threw my arms around his neck, hugging him close to me. “Please don’t go,” I whispered.

“I’m right here, little one.” He stroked my back with his hand. “I’ll stay here for as long as you want me to.” Somehow, I managed to hold back from sobbing and push the vision from my mind, clinging to the fact that I didn’t yet know if I was actually seeing the future or not. I caught my breath as he held me in silence for a little while. 

“So where are we gonna sleep on this rust bucket?” I asked eventually, voice hoarse despite my lack of yelling. I felt him give a short laugh. 

“Want to know a secret?” he asked, and there was something bright in his voice. I leaned back and looked at his face. Something joyful was lurking behind his eyes, and I wanted desperately to know what it was.

“What?” Instead of answering my question, he stood up and grabbed me into his arms, which made me giggle. He walked out and into the hallway where he went all the way down to the end and tapped at the floor covering with his foot. I heard it just barely shift. He leaned down, holding me against him with his glorious strength, and lifted up the hatch to one of the secret compartments. He tapped something, then stood up. I turned my head to look down inside it.

There was a nest, tucked into the last compartment. It was made up of a thin mattress on the floor, with blankets and a big soft comforter and a few really raggedy pillows. And strung along the inside rim of the compartment lid were-- fairy lights. Like tiny stars they glinted in the dim hallway. I gasped, then turned to beam at him.

“Was this--”

“Ben’s little hideaway? Yeah. But Matt and I used to come here periodically too. When we got the chance. Seems like they left it here all this time. I found it earlier, after Matt was done working.” I wasn’t sure how he wasn’t weeping openly, but maybe now just wasn’t the time. He seemed to have to find very select moments to cry about what was hurting him. Maybe this tiny piece of his past wasn’t the thing he would cry about, anyway. 

Without warning, he hopped down into it. I laughed and did my best to maneuver with him as he sat and scuttled down to stretch out long on the mattress. The compartments were only crouching height, but they were pretty large lengthwise and even wide enough for us to lie comfortably beside each other. I scooted up close to him, looking up at his eyes as they glittered with the dots of light that surrounded us.

“This is amazing,” I said, heart swelling. 

“I thought you might like it,” he replied, smiling at me. His face was almost youthful, sad and sweet as he leaned his head close and pressed his lips ever so gently into mine. That kiss was so soft, so reverent, that it left me breathless. He tugged a blanket up over us, and turned to wrap himself around me when he pulled away from the kiss. I nestled my back against him, feeling his nose nuzzle into my neck. My fingers intertwined with his in the hand that was wrapped over me, and then my other hand found the one that was slipped beneath my head and held that one, too. 

“Goodnight, Kylo,” I murmured, feeling myself finally start to reach the brink of exhaustion.

“Sleep well, Aeon.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all like them notes between Matt and Kylo? i was like oh man, these are so cute T-T so many feels before and after some of my favorite Kylo smut to-date. a smut sandwich with feelings bread, if you will. sex always gets Kylo feeling some type of way. had to throw in a little sensation play, as it's awesome and i wanted to have some fun :3
> 
> anyhow, love y'all tons!!


	66. Chapter 66

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.

I actually woke up next to Matt the following morning, and he kissed me so sweetly and happily. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he got dressed and went about his work. Every time he passed by me for the first hour or so of scuttling around, he giggled and gave me another kiss. I dressed myself slowly, staying nestled in Ben’s little cozy place feeling like I’d been hit by a bus. Like, emotionally. Despite Matt’s adorableness, my brain kept trying to figure out if I even could stay here, or if I should, or what the fuck I was supposed to do. But there was no way to conclude anything, not enough pieces of the puzzle yet to even predict the possibility of making that call because I didn’t know _how_ I was gonna get home anyway, much less how this would end. I thought about Leia’s invitation to come see her, and got teary-eyed. My heart ached.

“Aeon?” came a voice, and I wiped my eyes real fast before I turned to look down the hallway at Rey. She was standing, gazing down into the compartment with unguarded fascination. I gave her a little smile which I hoped wasn’t obviously bullshit.

“Hey,” I said. “Matt’s already hard at work, I’m sure you saw.”

“You alright?” she asked, looking concerned.  _ Wow, zero faking-it points for me.  _ I took a deep, strained breath. 

“I’m… I’ll live.” I shook my head and stood up. “Is there something I can, like, do? To be useful? I would really like to do something. Anything, really.” I climbed out of the compartment and lowered the lid carefully. 

“Um, well, unless you can help Matt, not really,” she said with an apologetic shrug. “I mean, I’m gonna throw in with trying to help him out today since they boys are… not exactly engineering types anyway,” she added with a chuckle.

“I’ll keep ‘em company then, shall I? I’ll field all the tough questions so they don’t accidentally irritate the Supreme Goober by asking him later,” I said, raising my eyebrows. Rey smiled. 

“That’s terribly generous, since they might irritate you too.” 

“When I say I can handle that better than Kylo would, I’m 100% sure you know what I mean.” I grinned at her. She gave a little nod.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure. Lemme know if you need something.”

“Yeah.” She looked at me with a funny sort of expression, like she was surprised I offered. “I will.” I threw her a little salute and marched out of the ship and into the blistering heat of Tatooine. The boys were nowhere to be seen, so I assumed they were in the little dwelling we’d crashed in and made my way there. I snuck into one of the bathrooms to take a quick shower though, since Kylo’s valiant efforts to keep me from being gross weren’t really cutting it despite how cute and tender they were. 

When I emerged, I found Poe and Finn in the little courtyard that was mostly in shadow still, chucking a ball of some kind at one another. I crept up towards one of the exits but stayed inside, maybe kinda a little bit eavesdropping. 

“Yanno, Kylo might not be so bad if he was a totally different person. Which I guess, technically, he is?” Poe was saying from the little chair he was perched on. 

“I feel like it’s a little more complicated than that, I mean, the Kylo we both know and hate is still there. And apparently Ben Solo is another person too. I wonder if they all get along? Must start feeling crowded,” Finn replied. He swung the ball around his back with one hand before he tossed it back at the pilot.

“Yeah, really. I mean I guess none of them’s ever alone, at least?” Poe caught the ball by leaning way out to the side.

“You think that’s why that happened? Because he was a lonely kid?” Finn wondered. “I mean how does that kinda thing happen anyway?”

“Beats me, I’m not a scientist.” Now Poe chucked the ball high in the air and the ex-trooper shuffled around to get under it and catch it. “I mean how common is it, anyway?”

“Probably not very,” Finn said as he tossed the ball between his hands. “The other thing is, how does his apprentice deal with it? I mean, well, aside from… the obvious.” 

“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” I asked, stepping into the courtyard finally. Finn jumped and dropped the ball, and Poe sat up in his chair with his hand on his blaster. But then I giggled, and his shoulders sank.

“Don’t do that, please,” the pilot implored me, frowning. 

“Sorry,” I chuckled, reaching down to pick up the ball as it rolled towards me. It was made of something red, squishy, and kinda rubbery. “My ears were burning.”

“Uh, there’s something in the med kit for that,” Finn offered.

“I’m… it’s a saying where I’m from, don’t worry about it.”  _ Geez, sometimes I forget where I am,  _ I thought. Which was ironic, considering I’d been stressing about just that all morning. “But I’ll be honest with y’all, I didn’t know about them at first. The alters Kylo has.”

“Really?” Finn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, they’re like, incredibly different, as you can probably see.” I tossed the ball back at Poe, and he caught it easily. “It took me a while. Matt likes to dye his hair blonde, though, when possible. Which Kylo hates.” Now I was giggling a little, much the way Matt had the first time he explained this to me. 

“Is Kylo as much of a dick to the other two as he is to everybody else?” asked Poe, clearly salty. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“No. Though, I can safely say he’s gotten a lot better since I got here. He and I used to fight  _ all _ the time,” I replied. 

“Uh, Kylo Ren doesn’t usually fight. He just… wins.” Finn looked at me dubiously.

“Yeah, but he wanted to train me so bad he put up with it, I guess. Plus, all I ever did was not put up with him disrespecting me very well,” I said. “I was down to learn, he just wasn’t a very good teacher to begin with.”

“Why’d he wanna train you so much?” Finn asked.

“Cuz I’m really Force-sensitive, I guess. He couldn’t even use the Force on me for a while, which really pissed him off.” 

“Damn,” the ex-trooper muttered. “Why aren’t you as scary as him?”

“Well, t’be honest with y’all, I wasn’t real into the idea of joining the First Order. I was mostly in it to try to get powerful enough to fuck off and go home. But I don’t remember where home is, or how to get there.” I swallowed, feeling uncomfortable all the sudden. “You gonna pass that ball, or what?”

“Oh.” Poe looked at the ball, then shrugged and threw it sideways at Finn. “So wait, you just wanna go home?”

“I used to just want that, yeah.” Finn caught the ball, and gave me a strange look before he tossed it gently to me. 

“Guess things changed, huh?” he said. It wasn’t a jab or anything, in fact I felt strangely like Finn was picking up on my sadness. I looked down at the ball in my hands. 

“Yeah. They do that.” 

“So now you wanna be in the First Order?” Poe asked, raising a brow at me. “‘Cuz you fell in love or somethin’?” That was definitely a jab.  _ Hey, fuck you, guy!  _ I glared up at him through my eyebrows, and he tried very hard not to flinch but failed.

“No.” I threw the ball hard at him, and it struck his chest before he caught it in his arms and let out an  _ oof. _ “Kylo made me his heir apparent. I told him I’d blow the whole thing up if I ever took his place. He didn’t fire me, or throw me out the airlock, or cut me in half, and that was before we even got involved. I get the feeling he’s not actually dedicated to the ideals of the First Order. Just, he’s scared to let go of the power he has.” Poe was clearly puzzled, as was his friend. They exchanged looks before looking back at me.

“Okay, Rey said you might not be all that bad,” Finn confessed. “I wasn’t sure I believed her--”

“You absolutely did  _ not _ believe her,” Poe chimed in. The ex-trooper shot him a glare.

“But I wanted to. I mean, it kinda feels like we have an inside man, now. Er, woman. I mean, person!” I couldn’t help but smirk as he corrected himself with increasing embarrassment. 

“See, you’re gettin’ it,” I encouraged him. “So what’d Rey think, then? I mean she seems to be considering things. I don’t blame any of y’all for being doubtful, for the record. Kylo’s history is, uh, rough.” 

“Yeah, rough is one word for it,” Poe said, face flat. 

“Hey man, I know he tortured you that one time, but guess what? Fucking  _ Hux _ tortured me,” I retorted, pointing at the scar on my cheek. 

“Hux? Yikes. And that’s all you got?” Finn asked, sucking his teeth.

“Well that, and Phasma tried to kill me.”

“Phasma?” he said, eyebrows shooting up.

“Yeah, so I tried to kill her right back. And y’all see who won.” I shrugged. “She was coming for Kylo and Matt and Ben too, so. I wasn’t about it.”

“ _ You _ killed her?” The ex-trooper’s jaw dropped. “I thought I already did that!” 

“Yeah, she survived that ‘lil fall. Don’t ask me how, I guess she landed on some level that wasn’t on fire and got stuffed in a bacta tank for a while or something,” I told him. “She’s a beast.”

“Believe me, I know,” he said, glancing at Poe. “Which means you’re also a beast. A bigger one.”

“A Force-guided one,” I corrected. I really did not think that Phasma and I were a fair comparison despite my recent astronomical progress as a not-Jedi-not-Sith. “And she was the first person I ever killed, so. She might’ve deserved it, but it didn’t sit well with me for a minute.” 

“First one never does,” Poe said. Finn nodded his agreement. I blinked, realizing for the umpteenth time just how much death was not the same here as it was back home.

“Yeah. That’s what I heard.” I looked at the ground, the memory of my hallucinations returning to me-- and realized that once I’d murdered people en masse on Mustafar, they hadn’t come back. That felt weird and bad, but not in a way I could remotely process at that moment.

“You’re really not a bad guy, are you?” Poe asked, and I looked up at him. His face was softened, a little confounded, and almost sorry. 

“I don’t really like binaries,” I said. “People can always do good and bad things. We can help ourselves and one another, or we can do harm. I believe that we do what we’re taught to do, even if we know it’s wrong, and validate that to ourselves so we don’t break under the cognitive dissonance. Until we lose what wrong and right even are, or how to tell the difference between what hurts and what heals.” 

There was a pause, a resounding silence, and I looked between the two men who were regarding me like so many people in this universe had-- like I’d said something they’d never considered before, even though it made sense. 

“Unless we’re shown how to choose something else,” I added quietly. I decided to let that sink in for a minute. “I’m gonna go eat something.” And I turned and made my way into the kitchen to maybe find food, and be by myself for a little while.

\-----

I was still sitting in the kitchen, lost in a sea of hamster-wheel thoughts and having managed to slowly force myself to eat half a ration bar over the course of a couple of hours, when Rey walked in from the courtyard. 

“Hey,” she said quietly, almost gently. I glanced up at her.

“Hey.” 

“So, Matt’s still going strong, but I think he’s getting close to done and there’s not much else he needs anyone to do. This is looking like our last night here.” 

“Nice,” I said, nodding. “He’s so fucking cute.”

“He’s... ridiculously nice. Like, it’s genuinely baffling that he shares a brain with Kylo Ren.” 

“I know, right?” I grinned. “Will wonders never cease?” She smiled. 

“Hey, we’ve got a fire going up here now the suns are going down. You want to come up?”  _ Is she… inviting me to hang out? Like a friend? _ I looked up at her, uncertain despite the fact that this was hopeful and… I secretly really did wanna be friends with her. She was pretty, and nice, and also a badass. The image of her with a dual-bladed red lightsaber wasn’t gone from my mind, but to be fair it was part of a vision that was absolutely something I wanted to chalk up to anxiety, paranoia, hell even just latent jealousy. If none of it came true at all, that would be fine by me.

“Um, well, I’m not sure I’m great company right now,” I murmured.

“Sure you are,” she urged. “Besides, you don’t have to say anything you don’t feel like saying.” I sighed.

“Alright. You drive a hard bargain.” I smiled, less than enthusiastic but grateful nonetheless, and rose to follow her up out of the courtyard and onto the cooling red sand in the orange light of the two suns that were sliding towards the horizon. There was a firepit and a decent fire flickering away, which was nice because the desert got chilly at night. Finn, Poe, and BB-8 were all around it on little chairs, laughing about something. I missed my guitar, suddenly. This was peak strumming-by-the-campfire time, and it would’ve been so fucking comforting. The pang of sadness I felt pinched my stomach, but I took a deep breath and walked up anyway. As I did, I realized that there were three empty seats-- one for Rey, one for me, and one for Kylo. Or Matt. I was sure they hoped Matt would sit there and not Kylo, actually, but it didn’t matter. A little bit of hope sailed in to soothe my lingering grief. 

“Hello round-boi,” I said to BB-8, who squeaked and rolled a little bit away from me. “It’s alright, I don’t bite.”

“He’s a little nervous, still,” Poe informed me.

“That’s cool, I get it.” I took a seat, and Rey took one by me. “Y’all excited to get off this rock in the morning?” 

“Absolutely,” groaned Finn. “Today went on forever.”

“Well, it’s looking good for early morning departure. Then comes the hard part,” Rey said. 

“Yeah, about that. What are we gonna do when we find this thing, exactly?” Poe asked. “I mean, do we just show up at Palpatine’s doorstep with a really big gun, or what?”

“I was thinking we should maybe scout out ahead, just go and see where Exegol is, or what it even is,” Rey replied, looking at me. 

“While I think that’s a refreshingly reasonable and smart idea, I got a feeling we’re gonna have to persuade Kylo that Poe’s plan might not be the best one. He’s really gonna go for that.” I glanced between them, letting out a long-suffering sigh.

“For once, me and that guy are on the same page,” the pilot muttered.

“But we don’t know what’s there waiting for us,” Rey pointed out.

“Yeah, like he could be there all by himself in a ‘lil cryochamber or some shit, but he could also have a buncha followers or minions or fuckin’ Sith-lings or something,” I agreed. “And I already mentioned this to the Supreme Dingleberry, but Palps doesn’t seem like the kinda dude who would threaten revenge on the entire galaxy if he didn’t have a pretty solid plan.”

“I mean, what if we sneak in, since it’s just us and not an army or anything, and get to him like that? Sabotage whatever he’s planning?” Finn offered.

“How can we be sure to sabotage it if we don’t know what it is?” Rey asked. 

“Man, sure wish I had a huge army right now,” Poe said, looking pointedly at me. “Wait, doesn’t your boyfriend have one of those? And also wanna kill this guy?” I frowned at him, and almost shot something back about how it was at least half his fault there was no more Resistance army-- which would have been rude, but maybe deserved-- before what he’d said really sank in. I blinked.

“Shit,” I said, looking at the fire for a moment. “Fuck. That… is actually true.”

“See? I’m not only full of bad ideas.” Poe looked at BB-8, who beeped an affirmation. 

“Would that actually work?” Finn asked, looking at me with both intense hope and intense doubt in his eyes.  _ And he knows what kinda firepower the First Order has, too. Damn, WOULD that actually work? I mean, Kylo’s the boss, right? And the First Order isn’t like, excited about the threat that Palpatine poses, if Mitaka’s reaction to his melodramatic and very ominous broadcast was any gauge. _ I realized all their eyes were on me, intent.

“I… I don’t know,” I said, glancing up at them. “But right now, I can’t think of a reason it shouldn’t. I mean, we’d have to talk to Kylo and be sure, but that’s very in alignment with his goals.” They looked between each other, and I could sense their hopes rising. Something in my gut was unwilling to embrace the same hope-- I mean, maybe because the First Order was like, a totally fascist regime which rose up specifically to recreate the sort of Empire which our target had quite literally been in charge of. Maybe, even if he technically posed a threat, that might get in the way somehow.

“I suppose we’ll just have to talk to him then. Or, you will,” Rey said, and looked at me. I raised an eyebrow. 

“Why me specifically?”

“Because clearly he listens to you.”  _ Oof. That’s cute. _

“Yeah, kinda, but also not really,” I replied, frowning. “Like, yeah, okay. He has listened to me before. But pretty much never about things like, uh, running the First Order, or how to mount a full-frontal assault on literally anything, or just military shit in general. And, his emotions are invested this time. I mean, yes, he’s gotten less ridiculously volatile… but shit. It’s just… I mean it’s a mixed bag.” They were all staring at me like they were about to try and shame me into trying. I threw up my hands. “Listen, just don’t put all your eggs in my basket, okay? I’ll do what I can, but y’all are more important backup than you think. Plus, I  _ want _ him to listen to y’all, not just me.”

“Fair enough,” Finn said. Rey was smiling at me.

“You really are on our side,” she said.  _ Oof oof oof. _

“I genuinely believe we’re all on the same side here, and there’s just… profound levels of distortion, or whatever,” I said, uncomfortable.  _ Sides sides sides! Good guys bad guys! God its so fucking reductive and reductive is NOT going to help Kylo or Matt or even little Ben, and they’re my real goal here. Not that getting rid of Emperor Zombie-Headass isn’t a great goal too, obviously, but fuck! _

“Yeah, killing your dad is pretty distorted,” muttered Poe.  _ Um, excuse you? _ Suddenly my eyes flashed at him, and he stared back at me with a frightened look as he felt something on his neck. I wasn’t choking him with the Force just yet, but I was letting him know I could. Maybe unwisely, but.

“Not cool, dude,” I growled. I did remove the pressure on his neck though, since there was at least one tiny part of my brain that was trying to think clearly still. The rest was a little emotionally overwhelmed. “You have  _ no idea  _ how he actually feels about that. Most people don’t. I suggest you let it go right here, right now.” 

“Okay, okay,” the pilot said. “You don’t have to go all dark-side on me, shit.” He stared at the ground, but I could feel the eyes of the other two on me. The energy around the fire was not very fun or friendly anymore. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. 

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I got a lot to deal with right now.”

“Yeah, well. How ‘bout I let you deal with that, then?” Poe retorted, less aggressively than before but still with a sting in his voice.  _ Jeez, I like Poe but he’s truly an aggravating person to be at odds with. Which is highly in-character, I guess. _ He rose to his feet, brow dark. “I’ll just go see if I can help your other boyfriend, the one who  _ isn’t _ a murderer.” And he trudged off towards the  _ Falcon. _ My guts twisted up at the truly awful irony of that statement.

“You know,” said Finn to me, voice serious but much less full of vitriol than his friend’s, “I get that you fell for him and all that, but if you plan to keep defending him to the people he hurt the most, you got your work cut out for you.” 

I stared back at him, not a hostile look but one that said rather abstractly exactly what was going through my mind. Which was  _ I don’t need you telling me how much this sucks, especially when you have no idea what’s really happening. _ He seemed resigned to letting me feel how I felt, so he just sighed and stood up to follow Poe. I looked at the flickering light from the fire on the sand and shook my head. 

“God, things used to be so simple,” I lamented. Which is hilarious, if you think about it, because being bipolar is absolutely the opposite of simple. And yet.

“I know the feeling,” Rey said, sighing and looking at me. “I felt that, just now. Your urge to protect him.” I returned her gaze. 

“When I say y’all don’t know him… he’s never hurt me, Rey. Well, okay, one time he pretended to choke me just to get me to panic and use the Force, but honestly that was the second time we ever met and it was a huge misunderstanding.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “What? I  _ did _ fling him into a glass wall, after that.” 

“Oh, okay,” she replied, raising her eyebrows and seeming almost amused.

“Matt’s got his own demons. They’re buried much deeper than Kylo’s, and he buries them under being a genuinely kind person. And Kylo, it took him a while to believe that I wasn’t gonna play by his rules. But I tried to actually give him room to become someone other than a terrifying asshole.” I slumped over and put my elbows on my knees. “I dunno how else y’all were hoping to help him. But I’m not from here, and I wasn’t involved in this mess when we met, so I had to give him that opportunity because it kinda made sense that nobody else would.” She looked at me silently for a moment, wheels turning in her head.

“Do you think it’ll work, in the end?” Her voice was soft. I took a deep breath.

“I fuckin’ hope so. Because I have no idea what I’ll do if it doesn’t.” I put my head in my hands, finally starting to feel the godawful weight of what I’d been brought here to do, more than I ever had before. Tears were in my eyes, and I watched one fall directly onto the sand below. “You can be whatever you decide to be, Rey. You don’t have to be any fuckin’ thing that anybody says you are. Jedi, Sith, nobody, legacy, rebel, servant, master, apprentice. Fuckin’ crazy person or victim or monster-- none of that shit. None of it. We all got told some shit we already were, I get it. We all sit here trying so hard to either be that, or be aggressively  _ not _ that. Or something in between or fuckin’ both, I dunno. But you write your own story. I’m writing my own, or trying to, and trying so fuckin’ hard to remember that I can’t write anybody else’s. No matter how hard I try. I can’t fix anyone, just myself.” I blinked while another tear plopped down onto the sand, and almost jumped when I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “Luke put a lot of pressure on you, but you don’t have to be alone.”

“I feel pretty alone, when nobody will look at it from my point of view. Except Luke, and he’s dead. Finn’s right. I do have my work cut out for me.”

“It’s Kylo’s decision, in the end. If he chooses to act one way or another. And I guess Matt, too, and maybe Ben, I don’t know. I don’t know how all of them feel. But I know you care about them, probably in a different way than anybody else does, so maybe that will help open up the options.” She sounded like she wasn’t sure, but wanted very badly to believe everything she was saying. I sat upright, and she let her palm slide off me. 

“Yeah. I hope so, ‘cuz I’m trying really fuckin’ hard,” I murmured, wiping my face with my cowl.

“I guess that’s why Luke picked you,” she said with a smile. I laughed.

“I dunno if he picked me for any better reason than the Force told him to.” I rubbed my nose. “And what the fuck does the Force know, anyway?”

“It seems to know how much this matters to you,” she pointed out. “You’re so connected to them. Even I can feel it.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s Luke’s doing.”  _ Or, you doubt that you’re really that genuinely loved by another person much less two other persons, but go off I guess. _

“Did Luke ever tell you what his reasoning was? Or how he did it?”

“He never really told me how he did it. I just woke up on the Supremacy one day, like welp, here ya go, deal with it,” I chuckled wryly. “Eventually he showed up and was all, ‘this is my last ditch effort to save my nephew, don’t fuck it up.’ He hasn’t been the most reassuring this whole time, but I mean. He tries to tell me when he thinks I’m getting something right, at least.”

“Getting what right?” came a deep voice from behind me. Suddenly, every drop of blood in my veins turned into ice and I froze. Rey’s eyes flicked back there and then back at me, widening in shock. She started to speak.

“Um, well--”

“Getting  _ what _ right, Aeon?”  _ Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit. No. No no no no no. _ I closed my eyes, praying to whoever was around that this was not who I knew it was. I turned slowly on my chair, and looked back at the tall, slouched figure behind me.

“Matt--”

“When were you gonna tell me?” he asked, his voice burning, the look in his eyes shooting through me painfully. My heart started to pound wildly in my ears, and my knuckles were white as I gripped the back of my little seat.

“Matt, I can explain--”

“Pease! Please explain why you were just talking about my uncle! I would really like to know!” He was staring, lip crumpling, but he didn’t look sad. He looked absolutely  _ livid. _

“Matt, I’m sorry--”

“You seriously came here because of him? To save my soul? You said you  _ loved _ me--”

“I DO love you!” I shouted, and there were tears in my eyes. “I can’t even explain how much I love you--”

“Then WHY are you trying to get me to go back?” he shouted, his face starting to turn red and fists balled up at his sides. “Why the fuck are you trying to manipulate me, Aeon? For him? Because you think there’s something wrong with me? With  _ us? _ ”

“I wasn’t trying to manip--”

“You just said you wondered if Luke is the reason you’re connected to us! I just heard you say that! What the fuck are you getting right according to him, Aeon?” I wanted to scream, to stop him from yelling at me, to stop his anger from just getting bigger and bigger.

“Matt! Stop! You’re not listening--”

“ _ Why _ would I listen to you? You’ve just been working for Luke this entire time, trying to get me and Kylo and Ben to all integrate, trying to force us all into something we’re not! That’s what you’re doing, right?” My eyes flew wide open.

“ _ What? _ No!”

“He still thinks we can’t function together, still wants to try and make us his fucking protege, doesn’t he? But not the way we are, no, just the way he WANTS us to be! And you don’t really give a shit about me, not really, not if you just want me and Kylo and Ben to all be the same person when we’re not and we don’t wanna be! Was everything you said to me bullshit, Aeon? ‘Cause it sounds like none of it was real!” He felt huge now, looming over me, and I stood up to puff up my chest, shoving the chair aside, starting to get angry myself.

“Stop fucking telling me what’s real, Mattau, I’m fucking  _ trying _ to tell you--”

“TELL ME WHAT?” he bellowed, and the air was crackling as the Force jolted like lightning between us. Rey was standing on the sidelines, staring, poised to do something-- anything-- as soon as she knew what it was she should do.

“I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU THE FUCKING TRUTH!” I shouted back at him, feeling my hands starting to shake, tears pouring down my face. 

“How am I supposed to believe you, after hearing that? Seriously? I tried to get Kylo to respect you, Aeon. I  _ wanted _ you to have your freedom, to make your own choices, even if that meant leaving me and Kylo and Ben behind someday--”

“I know that! And I tried to make y’all feel like you had choices other than you and Ben hiding in your head for the rest of your lives and Kylo being the biggest fucking asshole in the galaxy! Even if that meant I still had to leave after you made them!”

“How? By pushing Luke’s agenda? By making us fall in love with you so we’d listen?” Every single word he said wounded me to the core. 

“MAKING you? I did not fucking MAKE you do shit, Matt! I thought you fell for me, too!” I was right up against him, glaring furiously into his eyes, which were black with rage. “I made myself  _ miserable _ trying to make sure I wasn’t doing something SHITTY by falling for you and doing something about it!”

“I don’t fucking believe you,” he snarled.

“That’s your choice, too,” I snapped back.

“FUCK YOU!”

“GO FUCK YOURSELF!” 

“I  _ HATE _ YOU!”

“I  _ LOVE _ YOU!” 

And just like that, our sabers were out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... yeah
> 
> it's that time o_o


	67. Chapter 67

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the shit literally JUST KEEPS HITTING THE FAN.

Meeting with Matt’s now absolute and fully unreasonable fury was nothing like sparring with Kylo, even when we were pissed at one another. This was much worse, because he was so far gone that I knew he would’ve killed me. Not that he was  _ trying _ to. There wasn’t any thought, any real intention; I felt nothing from him but rage that had grown so colossal and so unbearable that it flooded out of him, and now I was its object. 

He was using Kylo’s saber, because apparently he didn’t have his own with him. I could tell that it wasn’t quite attuned to him, like they were out of sync with each other or something, but that broken thing still drank up his anger and spat it back out at me. He was reckless, artless, blindly destructive. I pushed and lashed at him, luring him away from the ship and from Rey and Finn and Poe, out into the sand. He slashed at the ruins of the land-shuttle lying nearby, at an errant pole with a light blinking at its tip, at scattered junk on the ground as he careened about. He bore down on me ruthlessly, and I kept light on my feet and moved around constantly instead of trying to block his strikes which came at me like battering rams. Despite the relatively high weight and length of my saber, I felt like I was fighting a longsword with a rapier-- darting away, dodging, parrying, feinting; trying to capitalize on his lack of finesse and the relatively slow movements that came with trying to hit me so fucking hard. 

I thought about crying out, calling his name, asking him to stop. Begging him to stop. But I knew it wouldn't matter. In fact it kinda seemed like it would just make things worse. So I went from being angry to being his opposite; if he lacked thoughts, I was nothing but thought. My only goal was to exhaust him until he finally fell over and gave up. I wasted no more energy on being angry, and I wasn’t sure I had the right to be, anyway. 

I’d half expected Rey to join the fray, but I think something about the way the Force was crackling around us like thunder put her on her back heel. I mean, can you blame her? We were supposed to be master and apprentice, not to mention lovers. And this was one helluva lover’s spat. So she lingered behind, but I saw her watching, creeping out closer to where we careened off each other and crashed back towards each other in an awful, continuous loop. I don’t know how long we were at it. I lost all sense of time, and could only pay attention to redirecting Matt’s strikes one after the other after the other.

Finally, he started to flag. His strikes became desperate, heavy-handed, relying on gravity more and more as his muscles slowly drained of energy. Finally, he was weeping-- I was too, but that wasn’t new. He made sobbing, growling, heart-wrenching sounds as he lunged at me. But I kept silent, vigilant, unwilling to strike him in any way that might harm him. Just parry and thrust and spin and redirect, redirect, redirect. Swirling and eddying around him, he finally stumbled onto his knees in the sand. I stopped several feet away, panting. He was gasping for breath, face almost unfamiliar in its red, contorted pain. I was still on my tiptoes, saber brandished, ready to leap away or towards him if I needed to.

He swayed, and I met his eyes. They looked past me, through me. They saw nothing. The red crackle of the blade vanished, and he toppled over into the sand. 

“Matt!” I called, voice breaking as I ran over to him and turned him onto his back. I shut my saber off and knelt, staring in muted terror at how empty his half-shut eyes were. He groaned, head lolling, but he couldn’t move himself even as he tried to. Finally his eyes slid shut, and he fell still. For a few seconds I was afraid to touch him. Then I held my hand out and rested it gently on his chest, heart racing in anticipation that he might wake up and still be just as possessed by his own rage. But he was unresponsive, and his chest moved up and down with quick, shallow breaths.

Gently I brushed the sand off his chest and shoulders. Then I moved to trying to get it out of his hair, and with trembling hands I swiped the sandy trails of tears off his cheeks. I was still crying, tears bereft of their sobs just streaming down my face. When his face was cleaner, I collapsed against him, laying my head on his torso, finally taking a huge breath. My body started to shake with sobs that couldn’t escape my mouth. 

Suddenly I felt a hand on my back, and I jerked upright-- his eyes were cracked open, no longer empty. No longer Matt’s. 

“Aeon? What happened?”

“Kylo,” I whispered, face crumpling. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong, little one?” He was dazed, totally unaware of why his alter had just flown into something much worse than a fit of rage. I shook my head.

“I-- Matt, he…”  _ Where the fuck do I start? Like, sorry dude, it turns out I was here on behalf of your uncle the whole time and now Matt thinks everything that happened between us was a lie?  _

“He’s… angry.” It was like it was dawning on Kylo in that moment exactly how his body felt, or maybe he could feel Matt’s residual feelings through it, I didn’t know. “Why is Matt angry?” I swallowed, my guts feeling pinched by the edge of fear in that question. 

“It’s my fault,” I said, looking away from him. “It’s all my fault, but he just assumed the absolute worst--”

“Aeon,” came Kylo’s still gentle, but firm voice. “Speak plainly.” I shut my eyes, tears falling onto his jacket.  _ You can’t lie to him. You can’t lie to either of them, anymore. This is gonna suck so, so bad. _

“I… was brought here, to you, by your uncle. I don’t know how, and at first I didn’t even know it was him. But he told me after I’d been on the  _ Supremacy _ for a couple weeks that he’d done it and I was supposed to help him.” I looked back up at him now, fully expecting Kylo’s version of Matt’s feelings. Instead, he was frozen with his eyes locked on me. 

“Help him with what?” he asked in a toneless voice.  _ God, that’s even worse than him being angry, somehow. _

“He just said he didn’t like how your story ended, so he brought me here to change it. That I was his last ditch effort to save his nephew. He didn’t even tell me what to do, or how to do anything, or what’s supposed to happen that apparently I was meant to prevent. He just… told me that I could choose my own path.”

Kylo was still looking at me, his hand stiff on my back. I knew he was flooded with emotions, probably so many that he’d disconnected from all of them. I waited a very long moment for a response, but he was silent. “So,” I continued, “Matt heard me talking to Rey about it. I didn’t know he was there. He… he got  _ so _ angry. He thinks everything I said before was a lie, just to push Luke’s old agenda of getting you three to integrate-- which isn’t true at all! But he wouldn’t listen. I’ve never seen a human being so…” I shook my head, unable to go back into the vision of his face as he finally became angry enough to say he hated me. My heart was like acid between my lungs. “He attacked me. I didn’t hurt him. I just kept him fighting until he was too exhausted to stand up. That’s when you woke up.” I wasn’t looking at him now. I couldn’t. “I lied, by not telling you both about Luke. I’m sorry.”

A silence that hurt more and more every second hung in the air between us, until I pushed myself off him. His hand fell limp back onto his body as I did. I got the profound sense that he didn’t want me to touch him, so I sat upright next to him, gripping my arm with my hand. Awaiting judgement. 

Finally, he hauled himself upright. He slumped beside me, not touching, not looking at me, facing the opposite direction. 

“So you’ve been working for Luke this whole time?” he asked, voice quiet.

“Not when I got here. I really just wanted to go home. After that, I just wanted to help you somehow.”

“You wanted to help me, or him?” The edge finally crept into his voice. 

“You.” I said it firmly, decisively. “You were hurting, and I wanted to help.”

“How, exactly?” 

“By choosing my own path and hoping maybe you would too. And by forgiving you when nobody else was.” He was silent again for a moment, still not looking at me. 

“And falling in love? Was that part of the plan?”  _ Goddammit. These fucking boys! _

“There was no plan.”

“Why’d he pick you?” Finally, he turned to look at me. His eyes were sharp, but they didn’t hide his confusion. I looked back, realizing that there were so many possible answers to that question.  _ Because I’m crazy? Because I’m stubborn? Because I’ve been trying so hard to fix myself? Because I loved you? _

“I don’t know,” I replied. Yeah, not impressive, I know. But every other answer felt like conjecture-- well, except the whole crazy thing. Luke had more or less confirmed that, but I still felt like his choice had been a total shot in the dark. Kylo held my gaze for a moment before looking down at the ground, seeing his saber hilt. He picked it up and I flinched, but he put it back on his belt. 

“When we return to the  _ Supremacy, _ we will begin the search for Earth. I think you should go home.” 

I shut my eyes, letting the blunt impact of his words radiate through me like a physical wound. Slowly, my shoulders slumped, my head hung down, and my hands and forearms hit the sand as I broke. I couldn’t even cry, couldn’t sob or scream or be at all melodramatic. 

I hadn’t just failed. I’d also lost them both. It all struck me like an avalanche, and I felt cold and far away.

Without warning, out of absolutely nowhere, there was an enormous roar. My eyes flew open and I turned around to watch the  _ Millennium Falcon _ ’s engines turn bright blue, rumble even louder, and then lift itself up into the darkened sky. 

“NO!” shouted Kylo, but in that instant it took off with another huge burst of noise, making for the upper atmosphere. I froze, eyed glued open, shocked. Beside me, the Supreme Leader let out an awful, furious, totally defeated sound. I watched him scramble upright and stagger towards where the ship had been, futile and pitiable. The ship vanished impossibly quickly into hyperspace, lost between the specks of stars. He stumbled to his knees, screaming again, bowing his head towards the ground, slamming his fists into it. I felt the ripple of the impact through the sand. 

_ Holy shit. How could this possibly get any worse? _ Kylo sat back on his haunches, hands on his thighs, head still bent. 

“I can’t fucking believe it,” I said, staring in disbelief up where the  _ Falcon _ had been. “She fuckin’ bailed.” 

“She has the knife,” Kylo said. I looked at him, just visible in the distant firelight and faint glow of one tiny little moon, but he didn’t look back. “I have nothing.”

“You read the inscription, right?” I asked him, confused.

“I couldn’t read it entirely. Not enough to know where the Wayfinder is. I just needed a bargaining chip.”  _ Are you fucking serious? _ I stared at him, and I didn’t say anything shitty but oh my God, was I tempted to.  _ Who’s the fucking liar now? You just HAD to have one up on her, didn’t you? How do you know they didn’t manage to finally retrieve the translation from that droid they said they were trying to get it from? _ But, I thought about the vision I’d had when I touched the knife. The image of the wreck, the dark chamber, the half-flooded precipice where Rey’s saber crashed through his body. I looked at the ground for a moment, feeling in my bones that something terrible was about to happen.

“We don’t need the knife,” I said finally. Kylo looked up at me then, dark eyes full of fire. I met them, terror pumping through my veins. “I know where we’re going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a shorter chapter, just to really round out all the fuckery that just occurred o_o
> 
> how will our heroes cope? will Kylo and Matt see reason? what is this whole redemption arc gonna look like anyway? is Luke ever gonna be actually helpful?? stay tuned for the next update...!


	68. Chapter 68

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I know exactly how the Force works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is some smut in this chapter, and it's not the nicest, just a heads up. also MAJOR RoS spoilers!

In the shuttle we’d taken down to Tatooine, Kylo and I careened through hyperspace on the way to the wreckage of the  _ Death Star _ which was apparently on a planet called Kef Bir. I sat silently in the co-pilot’s seat, not looking at him, full of shame and sorrow. I wanted to melt into the chair, become one with the shuttle, never have to deal with being a person ever again. Beside me, Kylo was a stone wall. 

I kept seeing the vision over and over in my head, kept thinking about Rey’s appearance as some kind of dark Force user or Sith-wannabe. The more I thought, the more my skin crawled and the more the silence started to make me feel like I might explode.

“If she’s not there when we arrive, what do we do?” I asked finally, unable to continue spiraling.

“We await her arrival. When she comes, I will take the Wayfinder and confront her. Alone.” His voice was emotionless, which was so much worse than being angry. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea--”

“You will follow my orders, apprentice,” he cut me off. But nothing made me pissy like Kylo talking down to me. 

“She’s gonna  _ kill _ you,” I told him pointedly, glaring. “I saw it when I touched the knife.” He said nothing, looking out the window at the tunnel of light. “Hey asshole, didja hear me?”

“You will address me as your Supreme Leader.” His head snapped around to glare back at me.  _ Finally. _ “Or not at all.”

“Oh yeah? No more Master Ren, huh?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just being a coward by reminding me who’s in charge, putting me in my place--” My airflow was suddenly cut off, an invisible hand closing around my neck with much more brute force than Kylo’s physical hand ever had. I wheezed and tried to put my hands up and pry the invisible hands off (a useless but apparently universally instinctive reaction to being Force choked) only to realize that my arms were stuck to the arm rests of the co-pilot’s chair, my legs glued to the seat of it. 

“You want me to put you in your place?” came Kylo’s stony voice. I was starting to get dizzy from the air loss, but I honestly didn’t care. My eyes swam up to see him staring at me through his eyebrows. There was only the barest hint of his usual feral look in them. “You want to be reminded whose shuttle this is, whose ship you live on, whose army laid waste to your Republic, whose fucking food you eat and whose clothes you wear and who made you what you are?” Just as I was approaching feeling like I was about to faint, the choke eased off. “Answer me!” 

“Fuck you,” I spat. I ignored the heat pooling in my trousers, because surely that was my Pavlovian response to being restrained and choked by him at this point. I was not feeling at all like fucking. I wasn’t even feeling like fighting, despite being angry at him and feeling his anger at long last.

When an invisible hand slapped me across the face, leaving a sting across my entire cheek and that side of my jaw, I realized what I felt like doing. I felt like hurting. 

“You don’t deserve it,” Kylo growled. “You deserve to be left on a desolate rock to starve.”

“You already tried that threat, it doesn’t scare me.” Once again, the Force slapped me, on the other side this time. The sting rippled through my face. 

“Should I try another one? Should I threaten to throw you into a solitary confinement chamber for all your fucking visions to haunt you till you’re dead?” Now I looked at him through my eyebrows.  _ That was a low blow, but he’s never been involuntarily committed. _

“Nothing I haven’t handled before.” He snarled, and I got two slaps for that. The pain was terrific, sending blood up to my skin and out to my limbs in anticipation of the next one. 

“You were supposed to rule with me,” he hissed, turning his seat around to face me. “We could’ve done  _ anything _ together, Aeon.”

“I wasn’t gonna rule the fucking First Order with you and I told you that!”

“Then why would you become my apprentice and stay with me? What did you think we were going to do, exactly?”

“I don’t know! Maybe grow the fuck up and face your problems!”  _ Slap! _ “Maybe face your mistakes!”  _ Slap! _ “Maybe face your fucking mother!”  _ Slap slap slap! _ Spit was oozing out of my mouth, and I saw a trace of blood in it. I was starting to feel that heady, almost-high feeling I’d gotten in the interrogation chamber with Hux.

“I don’t have to touch you to break you, you know,” he said. My chair spun around to face his, my limbs still plastered to it. My insides were hot, my skin tingling. Finally I tasted a little copper, and licked around the inside of my mouth, heavy eyes looking up at him. 

“Hux couldn’t break me like this. What makes you think you will?” I asked. His nostrils flared. He kicked his boot up and ground his heel between my legs, and I gasped. I hadn’t even realized how stiff my clit was getting, and now there was enormous pressure against it-- so much it almost hurt.

“Because I know you, Aeon,” he replied, and now the predator was in his voice. 

“Do you?” I said between clenched teeth.

“Yes.” He pushed his shoe harder into my pelvic bone, and I grimaced. “I know you can’t be forced. I know you have to  _ want _ to be broken.” 

My heart pounded in my ears. Against the pressure of his foot, my inner thigh muscles started to shake. The pain I was feeling was like a blossoming of the pain in my chest, the shame and regret.  _ He’s right. I deserve it. _ My fingers gripped the arms of the co-pilot chair with white knuckles. 

“Fucking try,” I growled at him. I felt the sharp sensation of being pinched really fucking hard on both my nipples, fabric be damned, and I yelped. “Fuck! You gotta do better than that, Kylo!” The second pinch was even harder, and I yelped again as my entire cunt started to throb. He pulled his boot away from it finally, and my legs stopped shaking. He stared between my legs, and I glanced down to see the damp fabric of my pants clinging to me.

“Incredible.” He seemed bemused. “The best part is that this time, it doesn’t matter what you call me. It doesn’t matter how good you try to be or not. You don’t get what you want from me, not anymore.” I stared at him, upset on so many levels at what he’d just said. Before I could formulate a reply, though, I felt the rough and overwhelming sensation of the Force right on my swollen clit.

“FUCK!” I yowled, because the pleasure was mixed with pain from how rough it was, how much his foot had just laid into me. I clenched up against the sensation, struggling against my constraints. “You’re a piece of shit!”

“Am I?” he barked, and I felt more slaps and pinches all over my body. The pain was bright, searing through me every time. “Am I a piece of shit any more than you are for lying this entire time?”

“YES!” I screamed in response, the awful intensity of whatever he was doing to my clit starting to reach into my belly like fire. “YOU FUCKING MURDERER! YOU FUCKING FASCIST!”

“I did what I had to, to survive.” His voice was suddenly lower, and he leaned towards me in his seat. “I did the only thing I could do to protect Matt and Ben. What else was going to keep someone like us safe? In this world where everyone wants what we have for themselves, and wants nothing for us?”

“I wanted you to be  _ happy-- _ ” But suddenly I felt something filling my sore and tense cunt, stretching me with its invisible presence. My eyes flew wide open and I gasped, spine going straight as a board. It felt huge, ballooning inside me, pressing me right up to the edge of painful. If you’ve ever been fisted… well. It was kinda like that. I happen to like fisting, though. So my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I shook in the chair, letting out an unmistakably pleasured moan despite the singe of pain that never went away.

“Happy?” Kylo’s eyes had gone black, and he bent his head down to look up into mine as I lolled in the chair. The pressure on my g-spot was unfathomable, the ferocity of the Force on my clit was relentless, and I could feel other painful slaps and stings still. Except they weren’t just painful; every sensation was superimposed over the deep pressure, the mounting release in my groin. “I was never going to be happy, Aeon. The closest I came to it was with you, just because you made me feel like there was a single person who believed in me, who didn’t want something from me.” He was breathing heavily, watching me start to escalate towards the edge. 

“I-- still-- FUCK-- aaargh-- still don’t-- shit!--”

“Someone who didn’t want me to be a Jedi or a Sith or a fucking superbeing--”

“ _ I still want that! _ ” I howled, arching my back against the chair as the cliff just barely began to give way, my insides exploding--

Then, every sensation my body was experiencing vanished all at once. The catharsis of pain, the overwhelm of pleasure, and whatever cocktail they made together was suspended, leaving me hollow, empty. My orgasm was gone, collapsing in ruin through my body. I sagged into the chair, feeling tears sting my eyes as I shut them. 

Normally I would’ve howled, pitched a huge fit, gotten really fucking mad. But I felt sick, small in the worst way. I could’ve fought back; I knew enough, was powerful enough that I could’ve broken his Force bonds and ended this whole scenario before it started. But I didn’t. Now, my broken heart was draining out of me in the wake of what I’d let him do to my body. It didn’t hurt any more than my feelings did. Hell, it felt better than the ache in my chest of knowing that I’d fucked up really, really bad. I was already wondering how I would explain just how badly my story ended to my therapist when I finally got home. Kylo’s words came to me through a fog.

“Still want what?” He stared at me, and there was more emotion than just fury in his eyes.

“For you to be what you are,” I murmured, looking at him through my tears. “You saw what I was every day and you loved me anyway. The only thing I wanted to do was return the favor.” 

For a moment, the silence was thick in the cockpit of that little shuttle. Then, we dropped unceremoniously out of light speed and started to descend towards the lush surface of a planet I’d never seen. I felt the feeble flutter of my heart trying to appreciate its incredible beauty, but nothing would grow in how barren I felt. The wreck of the  _ Death Star _ was visible from all the way up there, and we drew closer to it. Kylo turned and brought us into the atmosphere, and eventually we touched down on some of the green land that was nearby. 

When the ship was powered down and our scanners made no blips indicating that the  _ Falcon _ was there yet, he sat back in the seat and looked out the windshield. Though I could tell I wasn’t bound to my chair anymore, I didn’t move. His jaw worked like he wanted to say something, then he stood up. I expected him to go stomping out, but he stood still. 

_ What the fuck is he doing? I wish he’d just say something mean or kick me out or leave already. This sucks.  _ I watched him, and he avoided my eyes as he turned in a hasty, jerky movement and took two strides towards the exit. Then he stopped again, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was vibrating with energy, a mass of confusing emotions and jumbled thoughts. I felt paralyzed, trapped by his palpable conflict. 

Suddenly he growled, and spun on his heel to take me by the shoulders and haul me up out of the seat. Before I knew what was happening, his mouth was on mine in a rough, desperate kiss. I pushed against him, but not to make him leave. Just to keep my energy moving, to keep myself from falling limp into his arms or wherever he decided to drop me.

Kylo was making strange noises, snarls and half-words as he pushed me against the back wall of the cockpit. I gripped his shoulders as his huge hands roughly yanked my waistband halfway down my thighs. He was hungry, ferocious, terrified. He lifted me and shoved me up against the metal wall behind me, pulled my legs up. One hand was swiftly pulling his straining cock out of his trousers. Hasty and ungentle, he pushed inside me and I groaned into his mouth. Our teeth clacked and tongues wrestled as he started fucking me with no buildup to his savage pace.

“You-- can’t--” Between his gruff growling and panting, he was trying to speak against my lips. “Rrrgh-- I-- I love-- fuck-- shit-- arrgh-- FUCK-- Aeon-- why--  _ why-- _ ” 

His hands gripped my ass, and stuttering groans left my mouth as he pounded me. Another orgasm was blooming inside my guts even though I didn’t really care about it, twisted up in the torrent of emotions that crashed like the nearby ocean all around us. 

“I’m-- sorry--”

“FUCK you!--  _ fuck-- _ you-- I can’t-- rrrrrgh!-- don’t-- fucking--”

“Kylo,” I whimpered, weeping quietly even as my body started to near the edge.

“NO-- FUCK-- shit!--  _ FUCK YOU-- _ ”

“I-- I love you-- I’m sorry--” I felt my muscles clamp down on him, felt my orgasm break over me and shudder its way out of me from belly to limbs.

“FUCK YOU--  _ fuck-- _ fu--” His hips snapped frantically, pace starting to stutter, and I could feel him spilling hot into me. I realized he was weeping again, the second time this had happened and for almost entirely the opposite reason. “Fuck-- I-- can’t--” But he stopped, gasped for breath, and let out a ragged sound as he buried his face in my neck. I was still pressed against the wall, clinging to him. Just as I went to go and touch his hair gently, he jerked himself out of me and just barely managed to set me down onto my feet before he stomped away. 

“Where are you going?” I called after him, pulling up my pants and leaning on the wall while I followed him down the little passage and into the hold where the exit ramp was already extending.

“Don’t follow me,” he replied, righting himself and checking his belts and his saber at his side. 

“Kylo, you’ll die!” I insisted desperately, putting my hand on his arm. He jerked away from my touch and glared at me. His look was supposed to be angry, but I saw what was underneath it, and I hated it. 

“Stay here.” And he marched out of the shuttle. I sank down onto the floor as he vanished down towards the ocean. For a while, I just sat there. I felt delirious, overcome with grief and dizzy with adrenaline. I shut my eyes, and took in huge, deep breaths. I didn’t think about anything, didn’t resist feeling anything, didn’t try to fight with reality at all. 

_ He should know better than to expect me to follow his stupid fucking orders, _ I thought finally. My eyes opened, looking out the hatch and into the place I’d visited too many times in fleeting nightmares. Then I stood up, straightened my pants, checked my saber on my belt, and marched right the fuck out there and into the blustery wind and humid air, making straight for the wreck.

By the time I made it down there, the ocean had already soaked my clothes. The waves were colossal, crashing into everything and making every surface treacherous. I was approaching the cliff-like chunk of metal that jutted out over the sea in my visions, the one where Rey and Kylo were always fighting. 

And, to my great fucking dismay, that’s exactly where they were and what they were doing. I watched them at each other’s throats, and I could feel that Rey was angry this time, too. Kylo wasn’t though. He was relentless, determined, but somehow flat. His usual fury was nowhere to be felt. They moved everywhere across the part of the wreck we were on, everywhere that wasn’t seconds away from being swallowed by the ocean at least.

“HEY!” I shouted, but neither of them seemed to notice. They were locked in their fight, and it was exhausting to watch. Like watching Matt swing and jab and block his way to passing out all over again. They fumbled on the wet metal, recovered, dodged and parried one another’s blows. “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” No luck. My chest was starting to tighten, and I could feel panic rising in my throat. I wasn’t above cutting in, but they were moving so fast that I wasn’t even close enough yet to try, fumbling over the surface after them.  _ Oh fuck oh God oh no, please, stop fighting-- _

I felt something then, a really strong and strange presence. Maybe my eyes weren’t working, or I was hallucinating again, or something… but I swear I saw Leia suddenly standing beside Kylo, putting her tiny hand up on his shoulder.  _ So I guess I’m still crazy? _ But then, Kylo’s head jerked towards her at the touch, surprised, and his saber’s upward swing was delayed--

Like a nightmare unfolding right before my waking eyes, Leia vanished and was replaced by Rey’s green blade plunging right through Kylo’s torso. Exactly like my vision.

“ _ KYLO! _ ” I screamed, my voice tearing on the sheer horror and panic inside it. He staggered backwards and slumped up against the metal he’d been standing beside. Both saber blades vanished, and Rey’s face snapped towards me. She looked somehow horrified at her own deed, or maybe at my face. I would normally have just blown right the fuck up and tried to kill her, but I was so void of any more fury after everything that had just happened that I could think about nothing but him. I sprinted over, and Rey sprinted away. In her hand, I saw a little pyramid shape. 

“No no no no no no, Kylo!” I crashed to my knees beside him, looking at his vaguely surprised expression beneath his soaked hair. The only reason I knew I was crying again was because all the other water that was on my face was cold, but my tears were warm. There was a literal hole through his body, and my shaking hands hovered over it. I had no idea what to do, but my brain wouldn’t let me stop trying to think of something,  _ anything, _ that would save him. I looked up into his eyes. They were dull, amber, and focused on me.

“Goodbye, little one,” he said softly, his face fallen almost peaceful, almost smiling. My face crumpled as I felt his hand on my cheek.

“ _ Please _ don’t go...” But he said nothing, only looked at me like he was allowed to still love me and it brought him so much relief.

But I felt something strange, then, like a coalescing mass of energy all wrapping around me and him. The Force was flowing between us, but it was gathering within me. I looked down at his wound. On some instinctive compulsion I pressed my palms against his flesh on either side of it. The energy brightened, rioted in my veins as it started to flow rapidly and pour out of me. I shut my eyes, followed it into the broken parts of him. 

It was like a cracked mirror, inside Kylo Ren. I could see the glittering light reflected by all of his pieces, and somewhere in there I knew Matt and Ben had pieces, too. The only way I can describe what happened next is that I felt like I was pushing together some of them, and connecting them with new energy like panes of stained glass. I couldn’t fix everything, but I could heal his wound and what was radiating out from it. 

When I opened my eyes, I was staring at a rip in Kylo’s jacket and his pale, smooth flesh beneath it. It was like the wound had never been there. Then, I realized that my hands weren’t the only hands that were touching him. I looked up at him, and his face was pure shock as he looked back at me and then everywhere else. Because all around him were people who loved him. 

Luke was there looking down at him. Next to him was Anakin Skywalker, just as he’d appeared on Mustafar when the image of what he’d become had faded away. He was smiling. Next to him was Leia, and on my other side was-- Han Solo. 

_ Holy shit. _

“D-dad?” Kylo asked, bewildered. “Mom?” 

“Hey, kid.” Han’s grizzled face was bent into a profoundly in-character fatherly smirk, but his soft eyes betrayed him. Kylo looked struck, miserable, and scared.

“Y-you’re not real,” he stammered. “You’re just--”

“A memory?” Han’s hand came up to touch his son’s cheek. “I know.”

“I’m--”

“It’s okay.” They looked at each other, and Kylo’s eyes started to get red and puffy.

“Son,” Leia said, and now he looked at her. “We love you.”

“All of us,” Luke added.

“And we love all three of you, too,” Anakin added. 

“It’s just me,” Kylo said. “Matt and Ben aren’t--”

“They’ll find us in time, too. Right now, we’re talking to you, Kylo,” Leia said. His face crumpled.

“I’m-- I’m sorry--”

“We know,” Luke said gently to him.

“What do I do?” Kylo implored him. “What do I do now?”

“You can still fix some things,” Han told him. “You still have time to help Rey.”

“Palpatine’s going to amass his strength soon. We need you, Kylo.” Leia was looking at him with that look that was half mom, half General Organa. Suddenly, inexplicably I thought, Kylo’s eyes landed on me. 

“Is this-- did you bring them all here?” he asked me, nothing accusatory at all in his tone.

“Not on purpose,” I replied, smiling at him through my tears which had absolutely not stopped falling yet at all. 

“I think Aeon just loves you, and your connection really opened up the way for us all to come and remind you that we do, too,” Luke said. He was beaming, tears in his eyes. “Don’t blame them for my actions. I brought them here without asking, after all. They could’ve bailed on you at the first sign of trouble.” He grinned a little, and reached over to rub my fuzzy head. I didn’t have enough hair to muss up yet. “But they didn’t. They stuck around.” 

“Don’t forget us, Kylo. We haven’t forgotten you,” Han said. 

“I won’t,” his son replied. Suddenly all hands except mine gently lifted away, and everyone but me and Kylo rose to their feet. 

“The Force is with you,” Anakin reminded both of us. 

“Always,” Luke added. 

“See you around, kid,” Han said, and then he smiled at me. That touched my heart, like he might’ve been just Kylo’s memory at work but he saw me, somehow, too.

Suddenly there was a sound of feet running across the ground, and then a gangly 13-year old Ben Solo was dashing up the metal slab and running into his mother’s arms, crying. She caught him, holding him tight and shutting her eyes. Kylo’s chest shuddered under my hands, and fresh tears rolled down his face as he watched Ben hug her, getting one last embrace from his mom. When she looked back at us, and Ben turned his head shyly back too, she smiled and waved. 

And just like that, they all vanished, like they’d been blown away on the breeze. I hung my head, feeling so much less empty all of a sudden, but unbelievably tired.

“Aeon,” came his low, gentle voice. I looked up at Kylo, frankly not expecting him to be less unhappy with me than he had been however many minutes before. But his face was soft, teary, his eyes large and beautiful and brown with the slowly clearing sky reflected in them.

“Hey,” I whispered. He said nothing, only leaned forward to wrap his arms around me and tug me into his chest. I finally started to bawl, leaning into him and putting my arms around his torso. 

“Kylo, I’m so sorry--”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening to you. I didn’t want to believe you, that I could be forgiven for anything I’d done.”

“I’m still sorry I lied,” I insisted. “I don’t like to do that, and I don’t wanna do it anymore.”

“I believe you.” He kissed my forehead. For a moment, I just let myself feel better. Then I remembered where I was.

“Wait, what happened?” I asked suddenly. “Didn’t Rey just take off with the Wayfinder?”

“She did,” he sighed. “She finally beat me completely. I kept trying to prove she couldn’t, but she did.”

“Someone else wanted you two pitted against each other. What do  _ you _ want?” I looked up at him. He thought for a long moment.

“I want to stop clinging to my pain.” His face was sober. I brushed the wet strands of hair out of it, my heart singing.  _ Redemption arc #1 activated!!!! _

“You command a whole fleet, remember?” I said. “If they find out that Palpatine has forces, they’re gonna need to come to somebody for help. There’s no Resistance fleet left.” His face was almost funny, how surprised it looked. 

“Shit. You’re right.” 

“You’re the Supreme Leader, nerd. Use it.” I grinned at him, and he smirked back.

“We’ll have to get back to the shuttle and then back to the  _ Supremacy _ ,” he said. I nodded, and stood up. I went to help him stand, but he rose all by himself.  _ Damn, okay, Force healing is pretty legit. _ He looked down at his lightsaber in his hand, uncertain. Almost before he did it, I knew he was about to chuck it into the ocean, so I put my hand out to stop him. 

“Wait,” I told him. “Just… wait.” I had a feeling we were gonna need it, after all. He seemed dubious, but he handed the hilt to me. 

“Will you keep it for me, for now?” he asked.  _ Okay, well, if you just got forgiven for being a giant dark-side mess by your entire (dead) family, I guess you wouldn’t wanna keep toting around a red lightsaber, either. _ I took it and put it on my belt. “Thank you.” Now he was looking down at me, his eyes gone all strange and fuzzy. He bent his head down and planted a kiss on my lips, a soft one that had no motive other than to express love, I was pretty sure. When he pulled away, I beamed at him. 

“Hey! You two!” came a voice, and of all people Finn was running up towards us. “Rey’s gone. She got in your shuttle and just took off!” 

“What?” Kylo asked, staring at the ex-trooper. “Why? To where?”

“I don’t know,” Finn said. “She didn’t say anything to any of us, just up and ran.”

“She’s gettin’ real good at that,” I growled, irritated. 

“I assume your, uh, argument’s been resolved?” Finn asked us, looking a little nervous. I looked up at Kylo.  _ Well, with one of them, at least... _

“Yes. Is that why you left Tatooine without us?” he asked, strangely even. 

“Yeah. That was pretty scary. Apparently Matt had actually finished the repairs, so...” 

“So y’all bounced, then?” I summarized dryly.

“Yes.” He looked apologetic. 

“You wanna help us out now?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “She has the only Wayfinder left. We gotta get back to the First Order.” 

“Poe’s not gonna like it, but you can ignore him,” the ex-trooper replied, nodding back the way he came. “I don’t like it either, but fuck if I got any better ideas. The  _ Falcon _ ’s back this way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i don't think this counts as dub-con because Aeon doesn't think it counts as dub-con... that's my reasoning. ultimately they're pretty frank about how they didn't resist. it might not be a super HEALTHY way to approach your issues, to let someone slap you around a bit, but it's not ultimately coercive despite it being kinda rude as fuck to ruin someone's orgasm. (lookin at you, Kylo!)
> 
> ANYWAY. please don't murder me xD some of the struggle is resolved, but this ain't an easy mess to untangle so there is more to the story!! thank you for being invested enough to yell at me when the plot got stressful though lmao i fuckin' love y'all <3


	69. Chapter 69

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's high time for some makeup sex!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sure the summary gave it away... but there's smut in this chapter and it's very nice.

We took the  _ Falcon _ back to the  _ Supremacy,  _ which as promised Poe did not like at all. He and Finn and BB-8 hid in the secret compartments, so when Kylo and I arrived in the docking bay we looked pretty solid and totally not redeemed-by-forgiveness. I figured it was in our best interest to not totally 180 about whether or not the  _ Falcon _ and the people associated with it were considered the enemy or not, regardless of Kylo’s status. Sowing the seeds of mutiny after Hux’s tragic little coup just seemed like a bad fuckin’ idea. I told the boys to stow away for like, ever, basically-- eight hours, after shift change and when the number of attending officers in the docking bay would be lowest. Shift change was technically in about three hours, but I guess it was my teeny tiny little slice of revenge for them leaving us on Tatooine like they did. They were gonna have to stay cramped in the secret compartments until they could semi-safely make their run for it.

In the meantime, Kylo and I debriefed the command unit. Our story was super fake, of course. But Kylo saw the logic in keeping his place as Supreme Leader, and utilizing it at the right moment. We ordered a massive hunt for Resistance ships, wherever they’d gathered after Craite, and were informed that the status of repairing the first Wayfinder was that they still hadn’t figured it out. Kylo sighed, stern but lacking in his usual bristle, and ordered that project to continue with double the resources.

Mitaka pulled me aside as I turned to exit the bridge. 

“Ducky, are you alright? You look exhausted,” he asked me, forehead knit.

“I am definitely exhausted, but I’m okay,” I reassured him. “This girl just keeps giving us the slip. She’s ‘bout to drive me nuts.” 

“I, uh, well. As you say. The Supreme Leader seems unusually subdued as well.” 

“Dude, if you knew what he’d been through the past few days, you’d be tired just thinking about it.” I shook my head. “It’s Force stuff, not just trying to get this fuckin’ Wayfinder figured out. He’s at least as worn out as I am.” 

“The Force seems like far too much to have to deal with,” the Lieutenant said. “Regardless, I would like to talk properly to you, you know. Sometime soon.”

“If this shit either really cools off or boils over and gets done with, I’ll come chat. I promise.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’d chat before then, but I’m not sure I can.”

“Alright.” He looked at me, forlorn, then dropped his voice very quiet. “But it’s shit around here without you two in charge. Allegiant General Pryde is worse than Ren, if only because he’s less transparent and even more callous.” I glanced up towards the head of the command deck, where an old man was standing and conversing with one of the transportation officers. 

“That him?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, rather.” 

“He’s in charge when we’re gone?”

“He is.”

“I’ll pay special attention to giving him very specific orders then, the next time we leave,” I told Mitaka with a wink. He barely managed to hide his smirk. 

“You’re bad. Now, don’t let me keep you, ducky. Take care and let me know when we can have that chat.” 

“I will, Duffy,” I smiled at him. Kylo was standing outside the doors of the bridge, patiently waiting on me. I squeezed the little man’s shoulder, and turned to catch up. 

“You and Lieutenant General Mitaka really did manage to get close, didn’t you?” Kylo asked, no expression on his face.

“Yeah, and it’s a good thing too, since he knew better than to let Hux carry on trying to take over your job,” I chuckled.

“Are you going to tell him what really happened?” He looked at me, a little stern.

“No,” I said. “I think I could, though. I trust him. But I’m still not gonna, not yet anyway.”

“You really think you can trust him?” 

“I dunno. But he doesn’t seem beholden to the First Order more than to his friends.” I shrugged.

“Interesting.” Kylo really seemed to be pondering this, no extra judgement or emotion in his face. We entered the lift to his quarters. 

“So… um… how’s… how’s Matt?” I asked tentatively, my chest achy.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “He’s not been active. I don’t think he wants to come out.” 

“Oh.” I sighed. “Well, that makes sense.”

“Luke is the one he feels most betrayed by,” he told me gently. “He has a hard time with that anger you saw.”

“It was so terrible, Kylo,” I murmured. “I… he looked… he looked so empty. Of anything but rage. He would’ve killed me.”

“I know.” His hand came around my shoulders. “The same thing happened at the Academy. He tried to stifle his anger even more after that.” 

“Will… will he ever forgive me?” I asked, tears coming unbidden to my already tender eyes.  _ Damn I’m tired of crying.  _

“I don’t know, Aeon. I hope so.” Well, that was a fair answer. Just because they shared a body didn’t mean that Kylo was privy to the workings of Matt’s mind. I leaned against him, a pang of sadness washing over me. When the lift arrived, we walked silently back to his suite. Inside, I touched the frayed edge of the tear in his jacket. 

“This is fucked. You might as well scrap it,” I said. 

“That’s fine. I’m lucky what’s under it is whole and hale, still.” His hand came up against my face, nudging it up towards his. His brown eyes were honeyed and unguarded. “Thanks to you.” 

“You woulda done the same for me,” I pointed out.

“If I could, yes.”

“They just showed up, when I did that.”

“My family?”

“Yeah. I just opened my eyes--”

“Luke was right. You let me see them. Just like you let me see Vader, and I suppose my mother…” But he fell silent, and his face wasn’t smiling anymore. 

“She’s… dead, isn’t she?” I asked, even though I was already pretty sure she was, and my heart hurt. Otherwise how could she have appeared like that?

“Yes. I felt it, too.” 

“I wonder if Rey did.” 

“Maybe.” I’d expected him to growl at the mention of his would-be murderer, but he didn’t. He just stroked my cheek. “I’m sorry for what I did to you on the shuttle, Aeon.”

“Oh.”  _ That. _ “I-- it’s okay. I really did let it happen, you were right. I felt like I deserved it.”

“I still shouldn’t have done it,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I egged you on,” I reminded him, stroking the skin I could see through the hole in his jacket. It was clean, soft, new. “I thought it might be the last time…”

“I know. I want to make that up to you,” he murmured, and his voice was low and hungry. “Tell me what you want, little one. Let me give it to you.” 

_ Well, those words never fuckin’ fail to make me crazy turned on.  _

“Kiss me first,” I replied breathlessly, and he obliged. Bending his head down, his lips pressed against mine, took my upper lip between his. I moaned a little, enough for him to slip his tongue into my mouth. At first he was gentle, but soon his kiss was deep and his hands were wandering. 

“Will you take off my clothes?” he asked me. “And can I take off yours?”

“Of course,” I sighed, already at the zipper of his jacket with my hands. I peeled his damp layers off, his cock starting to twitch against me. I pulled him back towards the bathroom, let his big hands push under my clothes and tug them away from my skin, off my form. 

“Do you want to shower first?” he asked into my ear as he ran his hands down my naked back. 

“Yes. I’m covered in ocean salt.” I turned my head to look and see his beautiful, enormous figure folding me into him in the mirror over the sink.  _ Like you belong here. _ Sighing, I looked back up at him. His face was in a permanent soft smile, eyes glued to my every movement. 

“I’ll wash you,” he said before drawing me back into the shower, turning on the hot water. At first we stood under it, swaying in one another’s embrace. I could still feel the Force looping between us, serene and comfortable. Then he took soap to my limbs, my tummy, my chest, my back. He rinsed me off, and lathered himself quickly. I helped a little, but mostly I looked at his skin and through it into the strange feeling I had that things were different now, but also they were exactly the same. 

He dried me just as reverently, brought me gently into the bedroom. The window was open over a massive, purple planet full of billowing clouds. Beyond it, the stars clustered in extra bright streaks across the void. I looked out at it, my hand resting on my heart absently. 

“Kylo,” I sighed as he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind me and nuzzled my neck. 

“Yes, Aeon?” he asked, his low voice sending little vibrations through me. 

“Will you fuck me like you want me to stay?” I let that hang in the air for a moment, nervous. I felt him blink, felt his eyelashes on my skin. In response he kissed my neck, laving his tongue across it and sucking at the dip above my collarbone gently. Little gasps rose up out of me, a bigger one when I felt his hands start to trace along my body and slip between my legs to dance over the delicate flesh to either side of my cunt. He rose and turned me, bending down with molten eyes to look at me while he kissed me. Every movement he made was tender, sensual, but full of heavy longing. Pulling me with him onto the bed, he turned us over until I was on my back; one of his huge hands was pushing my leg out and away from the other. 

“If I could taste you every day for the rest of my life, I’d die happy,” he whispered as his finger started to skate over my clit.  _ Ohmigod. _ I whimpered under the weight of those words and the crackling of my nerves. He kissed his way down my body, stopping at each nipple to massage them with his tongue. Along my hip bones he kissed and nuzzled. His hands spread my thighs even farther apart as I watched his face finally float down between them, felt his hot breath over my slick cunt. 

“Ohh,” I sighed when he pressed his lips around my clit. He drew his tongue up my slit, spreading my juices and his spit all over the folds of my lips and the aching rim of my entrance before returning to the stiff bud. Lapping against it steadily, his eyes flashed up towards me. “Fuck,” I hissed, hands going down to tangle in his black hair. Warmth was spreading through me, pooling in my center at his ministrations. Slowly I felt him start to stroke my opening, and I clenched. “Please,” I mewled. “Please put your fingers inside me!”

His eyes flashed, trained on me as he slipped one in. My mouth fell open as it pressed up against my g-spot and started to rub little tiny circles there. It was almost like he was treating that spot the same way he treated my clit. The more he rubbed and massaged it with slow strokes, the more the pressure inside me started to build to match the heat. He added another finger with much the same motion, and I keened. 

“Holy shit, Kylo!” The buildup coming from both inside and outside was escalating quickly, the edge already nearing. My legs started to shake on either side of his face, and I gripped his hair tightly. He growled into me, tongue steadily working my clit. His pace didn’t change at all, only stayed the course. I gasped, feeling myself start to topple. “I’m-- I’m coming--!”

The wet sound of it announced my orgasm more effectively than my little whimpers, dribbling all over his chin and squelching between his fingers as he kept on pushing me through the unfurling pleasure that blew through me. My toes curled, back arched, hands pressed his face even harder into my cunt as I shook. He milked me for every drop I was worth, and finally ascended from his perch to push his wet lips and tongue against mine. My legs settled around his hips instinctively, hands cupping his face.

“Can I take you like this? Every day? Would you let me?” he murmured into my ear. I sucked in air, dazed from my first orgasm and full of the feelings that always poured into me when he said shit like that. 

“You could take me however you wanted--”

“I want everything, every moment you’ll give me.” His cock was pressed up against me, slicking itself in my cum. “I want nothing you give to be reluctant or forced or obligated, Aeon. Give me who you are, if you give me anything.” 

“Oh..” I was totally possessed as he stared into my eyes. I felt the head of his cock pushing slowly into me. “I--”

“Shh.” Now he was deeper, and my mouth fell open long enough for him to kiss me again as he pressed himself in to the hilt. “This is just what I ask for. You can say no. You’re free, little one. I couldn’t cage you if I tried.” 

Tears were welling in my eyes-- again-- as he started to fuck me slowly, so incredibly deeply. Our eyes were locked, and he was calm and focused as his breaths started to come in heavy and the coil inside me started to tighten around him. 

“I-- I’ll love you,” I whispered between his thrusts. “No matter--  _ ah-- _ what happens.”

“I believe you,” he replied, taking my face in one hand and pressing our foreheads together as he continued to rut into me. The heat and pressure were back, bigger this time, pushing out for release. Without warning he took me in his arms and turned us over, sitting against the pile of pillows and jerking his hips upward and into me as I sat on his lap. I gasped, the new angle even more intense and intimate, and wrapped my arms around his neck as I pressed our faces close.

“Fuck-- Kylo--” 

“I want-- I want you-- to stay,” he murmured, gripping me tightly and picking up his pace, panting. His thrusts were quick and hard now, reaching so deep into me that I felt like I might explode. He was staring with increasing watery intensity into my eyes while he held me and fucked me. “I--  _ want-- _ you-- to-- stay--”

“Oh fuck,” I whined. “Kylo--  _ fuck-- _ ”

“Please--” His voice was breaking a little, catching between his ragged breaths. He shifted the angle of his hips just barely, and my body started to seize up.

“ _ Kylo! _ ” Fire ripped through me, sparkled across my skin, pushed out of my limbs and shook them as it went. I clamped down on his cock, trembling from deep within, and he rutted up into me with sudden vigor and groaned as he started to spill. 

“ _ Aeon-- _ ” He rode it out on that breath, that name, and then fell limp beneath me, arms still wrapped around my body. I felt his breath on my ear; my eyes saw stars. We sat there panting, catching up to the world of flesh we’d just left behind.

“I still wanna stay,” I whispered eventually. I felt his head nuzzle mine. 

“I know.” 

“You always know.” He smiled against my cheek, ran his nose over my ear. His strong arms snaked around me, pulling me back against his chest. I felt so safe with him wrapped around me like that. Pain ran through the lovely warmth in my chest, a shiver of the knowledge that I had no idea if we  _ could _ stay together, or even in the same universe or not, once this shit got resolved. He tugged a blanket up around us, wrapping me in a cocoon as we shifted and nestled into comfort. 

“Get some sleep, little one. We’ll wake up to the alert about the  _ Falcon _ soon enough,” he crooned into my ear. I smiled despite the ache in my chest.

“Mmm.” Force-healing someone really takes it outta ya, so I passed out in record time. 

\-----

What actually woke us up later was a strange, sudden jolt we apparently both felt. My eyes flew wide open at first, and Kylo sat upright with his arm still over me in a protective way as he looked around. I wasn’t expecting him to jump again when he looked over his shoulder at the other side of the bed, like he’d been surprised.

“Maker,” he swore, shaking the fright from his head. “What are you doing here?” Peeking under the arm that propped him up, I saw Luke’s ghostly form standing by the bed looking very smug. 

“Sorry, is now a bad time?” the old man asked, not containing his troll-like glee at all. 

“Yes,” I growled, tugging the blanket up around my neck even though Kylo’s massive form was covering me from Luke’s eyes. “Can’t you fuckin’ knock or something, dude?”

“Not really, no,” he replied. “I wondered when I’d happen upon you two lovebirds all nested up, though. Sorry to spook you, but it’s kinda urgent.”

“What is?” Kylo asked, turning more to face his uncle as I huddled next to him and peeked over his ridiculous abs at the specter. 

“It’s Rey. She’s come to Ahch-To. She almost destroyed the Wayfinder, but she did actually destroy your shuttle, so she’s got no way to leave.” He rubbed his forehead and gave a long-suffering sigh. “She’s so willful, sometimes.”

“Why’d she go all the way there?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Long story short, she’s scared and she’s doing what I did after I felt like I’d fucked up bad enough. Exiling herself. She’s really stubborn, but please don’t try to whisk her off. You need her to come with you willingly to Exegol.” Kylo turned his head to look down at me, face somewhere between confused and concerned. 

“You think you can work your magic, little one?” he asked me, and there was something sweet in his tone too. I rolled my eyes, but I was definitely only blushing a little bit.

“It’s not magic,” I said. “It’s just being a human who has emotions and is, like, mostly aware of them. But yeah, I can try to talk to her.” 

“She’s got a lot to contend with,” Luke said. “It’s gonna take a lot of support to get her feeling capable, I think.”

“What’s she got that’s so bad?” I asked, snorting. “Scary strong powers are something the three of us understand pretty well.”

“It’s… more complicated than that,” he replied darkly. “I can’t get into it right now. But I need you two, and I have a hunch that Matt might need me.” I saw Kylo’s eyes brighten at the mention of his alter, who was surely in his own version of exile inside their mutual headspace.

“Thank you, uncle. We’ll be there as soon as we can be.”

“Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, despite the terrible timing,” I added, grinning.

“Pack for a stay, in case the Force has less hasty ideas than I do. Which it often does,” the old Jedi replied. He gave us both a nod, and vanished. 

“Wow. That was more direct than he usually is,” I commented dryly. This caused a little smirk to fall over Kylo’s face as he turned and looked down at me. 

“I know,” he replied, and I coulda sworn he was taking a little delight in the fact that we both knew his old Jedi master that well. The opposite of what I expected from someone who got really pissed when he actually found out about it. “We should get ready, now.”

“Agreed,” I sighed, and hauled myself up off the warm, cozy bed and into whatever the fuck was about to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all know i had to do something sweet with Kylo after putting us all through the DRAMA of the last few chapters (and on chapter 69, obviously... sorry there's no actual 69 in this smut though xD) 
> 
> stay tuned to see what adventures in redemption await on Ahch-To! <3


	70. Chapter 70

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A funny thing happened on the way to Ahch-To...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut ahead!

We left in a hurry, and I felt guilty for not getting to chat with Mitaka before we climbed into a nondescript little shuttle and sped off towards the first Jedi temple for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time. I did, however, give General Pryde a little extra spiciness on the way out. He seemed like he had more experience hiding that he was a little rattled by me and Kylo than other officers on the command deck did. We did order him to continue to report about the Wayfinder and the Emperor, though, via a transmission so we wouldn’t have to actually talk to him while on our rainy island ‘vacation’. The rest of the command team thought it was some terribly crucial mission to seek out the last of the Resistance-- and to be fair, it kinda was.

On the way there, in the seat beside Kylo’s pilot chair, I found myself typing out an apology to Matt on my datapad even though I was pretty sure he wasn’t ever gonna read it. Maybe I was just rehearsing, finding words for whenever-- if ever-- I got the chance to use them. My chest ached, remembering the profoundly empty rage on his face. I missed him terribly, his blonde shaggy hair and his goofy grin and his big, beautiful body that I should have covered in flowers and danced with and been fucking  _ honest  _ to. But instead I was busy being on a mission, and if it weren’t for Kylo’s sudden upward swing I might’ve regretted it.

**Hey, nerd. I wanted to tell you that I was never gonna try to push you and the rest of your system to integrate. I really do love you all so much, individually and together. I’m sorry I lied. I really had no plan other than to treat y’all like people, and maybe show you what little I know about being a person healing from the awful things that happened to me. You were always so sweet, so kind and thoughtful, and I never wanted to throw that away. I’m sorry I clearly did anyway. You never have to forgive me but I wanted to at least let you know that I only ever wanted you to be what you are. Just like you told me to be. I hope you still can be.**

I blinked at the letters on the screen through more lurking tears. But I swallowed, and managed to keep them held back. A large hand touched my shoulder. I looked over, expecting to see Kylo there with his grave and gentle expression. 

But something was different. His eyes were wider, nervous, and the touch of his hand was just to get my attention. He pulled it away after my head turned. 

“Matt’s still hiding,” he said quietly, almost like he shouldn’t have been speaking at all.

“Ben?” I asked, surprised to say the least.

“Yeah, hey. Hey.” He scratched his head, a little sheepish. “Sorry. I snuck out. Matt didn’t want me to but I did it anyway.”

“You okay?” I asked, brow furrowed. “I mean, how are you doing?”

“I’m…” He looked lost as to how to answer, and his big eyes got sad. “I miss my mom.” 

“Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry.” If my chest felt like a spear had been lodged in it for a while, now it felt like there were two there.  _ You can come over anytime, once all this blows over. _ I leaned towards him, putting a hand on his forearm and squeezing it. “Maybe it sounds dumb, but I miss her too.” 

“Yeah.” He didn’t seem to think it sounded dumb. His shoulders sagged. “Thanks for listening to me when I showed you Matt’s lightsaber. I didn’t know if you would.” 

“Well, I try to listen when you talk. Or, show up and don’t talk,” I said. “I don’t hear much from you, but I’m still here for you.” I tried to reassure him with a smile.

“Thanks,” he almost smiled back at me. “I pushed Kylo to bring it with us. Matt’s saber I mean.”

“He packed it,” I confirmed, nodding. “I have his, too. He almost chucked it into the ocean like a dingus.” My word choice made him chuckle. 

“I never got to make one,” he sighed. “Maybe I can, one day? You think?” 

“Yeah, you’re about old enough now, ain’tcha?” I asked, raising a conspiratorial eyebrow at him. “You’re growing up pretty fast.”

“I know, it’s crazy,” he said, looking away like he was embarrassed.  _ Well, puberty is a bitch and he’s slap in the middle of it, emotionally if not physically.  _ “But I wanna be out more, I mean it’s weird ‘cuz my body isn’t s’posed to be this… uh…” He looked down at himself. “Big.” I giggled.

“You’ll get there eventually.”

“Yeah, well, like I said I wanna come out, still. Some. And talk to Luke and like, I dunno… you.” Now he was actually embarrassed, blushing and putting his hands between his knees. “You’re really cool, Aeon. I was hoping we could be friends.” 

I was grinning a mile wide.

“Oh, dude. We can totally be friends,” I told him, and he looked back up at me. His eyes sparkled despite his blush. 

“Really?”

“Yeah! I don’t know you half so good as I know your alters. We should hang more.” 

“Yeah!” Excited, he sat more upright. “I mean all this stuff that’s happening is kinda scary right now but. I just don’t wanna be stuck up here forever, you know?” He tapped his head.

“It’s never too early or too late to get out there.” I beamed.

“Okay!” He looked like I’d injected a little light into his life, and it was so fuckin’ adorable and good. “Okay, I’ll come hang out more sometime. I promise!” I chuckled at the idea that he felt the need to promise me anything.  _ What a precious kid. _

“Lookin’ forward to it.” His knees bobbed as he spun around in the chair, grinning. He really was like a kid who just got the go-ahead to hang out with the cool older cousin at the family reunion, or something. 

“This is so awesome!” he was quietly saying to himself as he spun. I turned off my datapad and laughed. Suddenly he caught himself mid-spin and angled just shy of facing out the window, rather abruptly. 

“Aeon?” he asked, and I felt in my nerves and heard in the resonance of his voice that Kylo was back. “What happened?”

“Ben came out to say hi,” I informed him, giggling at how he tried to return to a straight-backed and not-woozy position even as his head wobbled. 

“Oh.” He seemed a little annoyed, but also fond. “What’d he have to say?”

“He just wants to hang with the cool kids. Which is me. I’m the cool kids.” I grinned. He smirked at me, and looked me up and down even as his eyes recovered from his little twirl. 

“You do look rather as fierce as they say you are, apprentice,” he said. I crooked an eyebrow at him. I was wearing my hooded cowl, a vest that showed off my arms, a leather pouch strapped to my thigh, and my big black leather boots that I’d tucked my storm-trooper under-armor pants into. My saber was at my side, and honestly I did feel kinda fierce. 

“Too bad there aren’t any cultists on Ahch-To to murder. Just nice fish people and Rey.”

“A great pity.” 

“You’re cute in your casual duds, though,” I said. Kylo was wearing a loose-fitting black shirt with long sleeves and a pair of rugged black trousers with his boots. The shirt just made him look even bigger and broader than he already was. He raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“Even cuter with nothing on, but.” 

“Are you alluding to something, apprentice?” 

“I might be.” I eyed him hungrily. Something about his being very decidedly not clinging to being a big bad guy anymore, and ditching his Supreme Uniform, was just making him more attractive to me. Though, I was fully certain that he needed exactly zero dark side energy to end up getting mad and sparring with me again one day. Apparently nothing could stop the frantic flow of energy between us. 

“Unlike you, to be less than certain,” he commented, and that made me feel a flicker of bratty defiance. 

“Oh, I’m certain,” I assured him. “For myself. I just…” I turned my chair towards him, leaning low on my elbows over my knees. “Wasn’t sure my  _ master _ was interested.” Now his eyes got blacker, and began to smolder.  _ It’s so easy to get him going. _ I leaned closer to him, my face at waist-level, eyeing the crotch of his trousers. 

“Interested in what, little one?” he cooed dangerously, and I felt a pang of lust shoot up through me. 

“My lips on his big cock, for one thing,” I replied, taking to my knees as I drifted out of my chair and all but crawled over to him on the floor of the shuttle. I heard him suck in an inhale, but my eyes were on the barely perceptible motions under the fabric of his pants. Sliding up close to him, tucked just under the controls with my head between his legs, I let him hear my own heavy in-breath as I slid a hand up his calf. “Would he accept such a gift from me?” I asked, looking up at him through my eyelashes. 

“My radiant apprentice,” he breathed. “You know I couldn’t turn down your rare and precious generosity.” 

“Mmm, you’re too good to me, sir,” I purred, nuzzling his inner thigh and watching the length of his arousal press itself to full attention against his clothing. My hands came up, running around and over it till they reached the clasp that kept him so abominably constrained.

“I think it’s you who are too good to me, this time,” he murmured, and I could feel his stare as I tugged his pants open and let his beautiful, stiff cock bounce out against my cheek. Instead of touching it, I simply opened my mouth and pressed my tongue against the base of it, dragging it up the underside to the tip. Pursing my lips around the head, I looked back up at him. There was no way he couldn’t tell how much I loved being the one who was on my knees but still absolutely being, for the moment anyway, in control. His chest rose and fell with his breath, and he watched me with rapt attention.

Pleased, I ran my hand up his thigh and into the opening of his pants to massage his sack delicately as I suckled the head of his cock. He groaned quietly, his legs spreading a little farther apart as he sagged in the chair. 

“Eyes on the road, flyboy,” I teased him, stroking his length very, very slowly with my other hand. “Don’t we have at least one more refueling station before we get there?” 

“It’s a fly-through,” he said quietly, but he glanced up at the streaking lights of hyperspace despite himself. I laved my tongue down his length from the top this time, squeezing the base with my hand.

“May I have some of your spit, sir?” I asked, pushing myself upwards towards him and letting my mouth hang open. He leaned down, taking my chin in his hand firmly before pushing two fingers from his other hand into my mouth, rubbing my tongue languidly. 

“So polite.” He was ravenous, but restraining himself. “How I shall have to reward you for this, little thing.” I sucked on his fingers and fluttered my lashes at him. That was a delicious promise I was more than happy to make sure he kept. “Open,” he commanded softly, withdrawing his fingers and working his jaw. Obeying him, I felt my thighs shiver as he leaned down very close to my mouth and let a huge dollop of his spit trail onto my tongue. He nipped my upper lip on his way to sitting back upright and I let the tiniest little sound escape me.

But I had work to do, so I descended back onto the majesty between his legs to swirl his own spit all around the tip of it. Hanging my mouth open rather extravagantly, I lowered it halfway down his length and closed my lips around him. I started to work up and down, sloppy wet sounds coming from where he slipped in and out and I sucked against his hot, swollen flesh. Slowly I managed to get lower and lower down his shaft, unhinging my jaw as I made for the base of him. 

“Fuck,” he groaned when my lips pressed against his torso, the head of him hitting the back of my throat. I stayed still there, not quite gagging yet, staring up at him. His plush lips hung open, wet and pink and so obscene under his heavy-lidded eyes as he strained his pelvis towards me, pushing back as far as his cock would go. “Uhn, you’re so good, taking all of me like that, little one.”

I hummed, and he shivered. Then I pulled back slowly, and plunged him back in to the hilt again. His noises of pleasure continued, legs lolling wider as his back hunched even more. I felt one of his big hands come rub against my fluffy head as I repeated my motion. As I started to pull back and give my throat a little mercy so I could bob up and down at a slightly less tortuous pace, I heard the sound of the sub-light engines kicking in. With a growl his hands went up to the controls, and the shuttle dropped out of hyperspace. 

If I had been able to see out the window, I could’ve seen us gliding gently up towards a refueling dock above a rock of a moon. But I was perfectly comfortable tucked beneath the controls, nestled between Kylo’s loins as his cock twitched in my mouth. I stroked him with my hand, too, for good measure, and watched with delight as his eyes darted between me, the controls, and whatever was going on outside. I heard the noises of the shuttle slipping into its place on the station, and the blip of the ship’s communicator. 

“Standard refuel procedure?” came a voice. I wiggled my head with his cock half in my mouth and managed not to giggle as Kylo grimaced and gripped the control stick with white knuckles. 

“Yes, and an engine check,” he growled in reply. 

“Ooookay, just sit tight.” I could hear the near-static of the communicator still being on, which meant that any noises he made would be heard by the attendant. I pumped my hand hard up and down his ponderous length, squeezing a pearl of precum out of the slit. He glared down at me as I slowly licked it from his flesh. His eyelids fluttered, and I only smirked a little. There were distant sounds of metal clanking and a droid beeping as it checked the twin ions in the back from the outside. After lapping at the sensitive underside of his head, I plunged down and took his whole length in my mouth again. 

“ _ Shit-- _ ”

“What’s that, sir?” The attendant had heard his hiss of pleasure. 

“Nothing. Is everything in order?” he said, voice strained and gruff. Now he was really glaring down at me as I took to a middling pace of bobbing up and down once more, slowly increasing the pressure of my sucked-in cheeks. I watched a flush crawl up his neck and over his cheeks. 

“Looks like it. Just one more minute to be sure.” I worked up a gob of spit in my mouth and pulled off him for long enough to let it trail from my lips to his head, where I swirled it around with my thumb. He was breathing harshly through his nose, unable to look away from me. I kissed the underside of him, letting his length leave a wet trail across my cheek. “Alright, sir, you’re good to go.”

Without so much as a ‘thank you,’ Kylo’s hands jerked at the controls and pulled the ship away from the fuel dock, punched a couple of buttons, and we leapt back into hyperspace. Snarling, his hands gripped either side of my face and dragged me up from my perch to devour my lips in a wet, urgent kiss.

“I will fuck you senseless,” he growled into my mouth.

“Good,” I replied into his. His hand landed on my ass with a loud slap, and he groped the cheek he’d landed on after I squeaked.

“Your mouth is amazing.” He was pushing the waistband of my pants down over the curve of it, fingers diving between my legs where a puddle had formed a long time ago. He hummed as his fingers slicked themselves in me.

“Can I have a finger in my ass please, sir?” I asked him, voice saccharine because I couldn’t tell if he’d changed his tune from reward to punishment-- but assuming he was still providing the former seemed like the bratty thing to do. 

“So filthy and then you want to fawn over me, little one?” He seemed bemused, swirling a wet finger around my asshole. I pouted. “Trying to atone for your bad behavior?”

“I was  _ trying _ to worship your cock, Master Ren. I didn’t know the nice attendant would be able to hear me.” Technically, this was true. I thought re-fueling stations were manned by droids. But that had made it even better, honestly, and I wasn’t hiding my delight very well.

“You play a dangerous game, apprentice,” he crooned, but pushed a digit into my ass anyway. I gasped, leaning up against his powerful torso as he pumped it in and out slowly. “It’s like you can’t stand to be too good. You just have to break something, push a little past your place.”

“Aah,” I sighed, my body starting to get tight at the center. “I can’t help it, sir. You just-- fuck!” He’d slipped another finger in, and I could feel a strange, vibrating pressure against my swollen clit.

“What do I do to you, little one?” he purred.

“Hnnn you feel  _ so _ good inside me, sir! Everything you do to me feels--  _ aah-- _ so good!” My nerves were starting to crackle, more dampness pooling between my legs.

“You want this big cock to fill you up, don’t you?” His breath was hot on my ear, and every word was sending a bolt of desire down to my cunt.

“Yeeees, please, sir,” I moaned. 

“Say it.”

“I want my master’s cock to fill me up.”

“Very good,” he said in his low growl, a feral smirk on his face. He pushed me back off his chest, grabbing my hips to jerk me onto my feet and turn me to face out the window into the vast tunnel of stars. My legs were still close together, knees a little bent, and I felt his throbbing, demanding length up against my slit. I bent over onto the control panel, avoiding the buttons as best I could. He tugged my ass a little more towards him, fingers massaging my glutes and spreading them apart. He made a low, satisfied sound at the sight, and I peeked back at him to watch him lick his lips. The broad head of him came up against my opening, and he rubbed it there without entering me. 

“Siiir,” I whined, wriggling my hips. But he held me just far enough away that I couldn’t slip him inside me, his nails digging into my hips. 

“Needy little thing,” he crooned. “So wet and ready from sucking my cock. Right there in the middle of the fuel-up. Bit of a slut, aren’t you, my apprentice?” I smirked and looked coyly back at him. 

“Me?” I pushed my ass back, felt his hardness slip between my cheeks. “A slut? You wound me, master.” 

“Who is it that screamed my name in front of an entire docking bay full of subordinates?” he growled back, working his hips to slide his cock up and down the crevice of my ass. I whimpered. “Who’s the one who got  _ so _ wet when I said I wanted an entire planet to watch me fuck them? Who begged me to cum until there were tears in their eyes on more than one occasion? Who’s the one who wanted this--” he wriggled the head of his cock against my entrance again, and I groaned-- “Inside their tight little ass as soon as they recovered from a nearly fatal wound? Hmm? Who was that, little one?”

“I guess that was me, now that you mention it,” I sighed, pushing my ass back against him again. “But my master makes me sing for him when he makes me cum  _ so _ hard…”

“All good little sluts want to cum. Bad ones, too. But none of them--” he yanked me unceremoniously down into his lap, pushing his length inside me as I cried out-- “cum so gorgeously, so  _ spectacularly _ as you, my fierce little apprentice.” He held me there, speared on him, already started to feel my body clenching with desire. I shuddered against the control panel.

“F-fuck,” I mumbled faintly. 

“Be a good little slut,” he said, slowly drawing his length out of me and holding me at the tip. “And tell me what you love to feel when I fuck you.” He drove it in again, and I yelped. 

“Ooooh fuck, sir! I love it, I  _ love _ it when you take me, I love to feel your huge, beautiful cock split my insides!” He was drawing it back out again, still slow and predatory.

“Like this?” He slammed into me, hips pushing up as he yanked my ass down. 

“Fuuuck! Yes sir!” My legs were shaking, heart throbbing in my clit. “I love to feel every inch of you inside me, sir!” 

“And I love to feel your perfect little cunt around me, apprentice,” he cooed. One of his hands reached around to push my legs apart a little more. Then his fingers were rubbing my clit, and heat was spreading out from my core all over my body. 

“Shit! Fuck!”

“That dirty mouth of yours,” he tutted, rutting into me once more. “That’s another sign you’re a slut. An insubordinate one, too, until you get filled with my cock. Then suddenly you lavish me with ‘sir’ and ‘please’.” I was panting, leaning onto the controls as he fucked me from his seat almost lazily. 

“But it feels-- so  _ goooood-- _ sir,” I insisted, clenching and unclenching around him to make my point. I heard him hiss between his teeth, and he held my hips still and stalled the motions of his hand on my clit. I couldn’t stop myself from making a pathetic little noise.

“What would you like, then?”

“Sir,” I mewled. “Please, I’m yours to ravish how you will. I beg you, however you want to, give me merciless ecstacy, fuck me until I forget everything but your name, please sir, don’t tease me!” Slowly, his fingers resumed their circles over my bud. I heard him inhale long and slow, like he was taking in what I’d just said as you would the smell of fresh flowers or a delicious meal on the stove.

“How captivating it is to watch you get desperate for my cock. You beg like a poet, little thing.” His hips slowly resumed their thrusting, and he removed his hand from my cunt to grip both sides of my hips again. But the pressure on that cluster of nerves didn’t stop, now given by unseen hands. 

“Thank you, sir,” I moaned as his pace quickened. “Oh,  _ fuck-- _ ”

“Let me-- hear-- argh-- your gratitude-- again, apprentice,” he growled, leaning back to watching himself disappear inside the red, slick folds of my lips. 

“Thank you-- Master Ren!”

“For what?”

“Thank you--  _ ahh-- _ for fucking me-- with-- your  _ perfect-- _ cock-- sir!” 

“Rrrrgh,” he snarled. “Music to my ears, little one.” He got even faster, hips snapping into me. “Are you-- going to sing for me?” 

“Yee-ee-eess sir!” I wailed, the Force at my clit and the frantic, powerful movements of his girth inside me pulling the coil of my climax tighter and tighter and tighter. 

“Look at me-- while you cum,” he ordered, and I didn’t even need the pressure of the Force jerking my head around to stare under heavy eyelids at him, but it helped. My hands clawed at the metal I was braced against, my inner thighs trembled, and I fell headfirst into his fathomless black eyes. 

“Fu--uu--UUU-UUUCK! KYLO!!” I howled as I flew over the edge, watching him rut up with extra vigor and harsh growls bubbling from his throat. I clamped down on his length as it pounded me, my skin sparkling and my guts pushing out my climax into a wet smacking sound, a dribbling little puddle forming under his chair. “KYLOOO!”

“Yes--  _ scream _ your master’s name-- while I fuck you-- like a good-- little slut!” Without warning he stood up, lifting me from under my hips still impaled on his erection. I gasped as my feet left the floor, bracing myself on the control panel with my forearms as he proceeded to hold my ass up and fuck me like a ragdoll. His pace was ruthless, my clit still abuzz with the Force, and the pressure inside me already starting to mount again. 

“Ohfuckohfuckohfuck-- Kylo!--  _ shit!-- _ ”

“Good--  _ fuck-- _ yes-- argh!-- I  _ love _ fucking you-- till you scream-- little one--”

“ _ KYLOO! _ ” The Force was increasing pressure and friction on my bud, sending a sear of electric pleasure through to my toes. “HOLY SHIT!”

“Cum again!” he barked. “Cum for me!” I cried out, and my body obeyed without consulting my brain. Shuddering, bawling, I pushed out another puddle and felt the hot waves of my second orgasm rippling out from where my cunt was throbbing around the pressure of his cock. 

“Oo-oohh--m-my-- _ Go-o--od _ ,” I moaned, voice wavering from the impact of him still pounding roughly into me. “Kyy-y-y--lo-o-oooo--”

“So-- obedient--  _ rrgh-- _ when-- I-- fuck-- you-- senseless,” he gasped, struggling to keep himself from spilling yet but determined to be the mouthiest top I’d ever seen in my life. Suddenly his thrusts slowed, but got even harder, almost but not quite painful. I let out a sharp  _ ah! _ when each one landed home, slamming into my cervix. The sensations on my clit were starting to make me feel almost woozy, like I was high on the absurd amount of neurochemicals being fucked this soundly tends to dump into your blood stream. 

“I-I-- can’t-- I can’t--  _ fuck-- _ ”

“Can’t-- cum-- again?” He let out a breath of air in what was meant to be a laugh. “Filthy-- thing! Fuck!-- I  _ know-- _ you-- can!” 

“Oooh fuu-uu-u-u-ck meeeee  _ Kylooooo! _ ” I groaned loudly, accepting in that moment that he was perfectly right and I could totally do it again. 

“That’s-- right--  _ fuck!-- _ little one--  _ shit!-- _ cum again-- cum-- with-- me--  _ argh! _ ” His pace started to pick back up, steady and relentless until it pushed both of us off the edge in a sudden symphony of sobbing howls (me) and ragged, breathless snarls (him). I sagged against my elbows on the controls, body falling limp as his seed spilled into me. His arms wrapped around my torso and simply brought me with him as he slumped back into the pilot’s chair. I lolled back against the comforting expanse of his chest, letting his huge hand slip under my knees to haul me up slowly, gently, off of his cock and replace my bum on his lap. Little spasms shook me, the aftershocks of stacking orgasms like that. I felt him breathing, huge inhales followed first by quick exhales and then slower and slower ones as our racing hearts returned to a more normal rhythm. 

I was still sitting on him like that, his head buried against my ear and hand stroking my tummy beneath my vest gently and idly, when the sub-light engines kicked on again. He reached over lazily to slap a button and drop the shuttle out of hyperspace over the beautiful blue and green orb of Ahch-To. But we sailed gently to a stop, not yet approaching the atmosphere. 

“Mm, fierce one, how lucky I am you let me fuck you like that,” he sighed. I smiled faintly, too dazed to actually chuckle.

“You’re lucky? Try being me,” I said, voice low and gooey rising from my exhausted throat. “Christ alive.” 

“You promised to make me desperate, one day,” he crooned into my neck. “Do you remember?” 

“I recall telling you I  _ could _ do that, if you’d let me.” Now the smile on my face was devilish to say the least. “Would you like me to?”

“Every master likes to see his apprentice come into their own,” he murmured, voice full of promise.

“I’ll remember that,” I purred, putting my hand up to his face and turning my head around until I could push my lips into his. Our tongues rolled around each other for a moment. “By the way,” I said when they parted. “We’re here.” He smirked but didn’t chastise me for picking on him.

My eyes trailed out to the planet, and I sighed. It was gorgeous, covered in wisps of clouds over the blue ocean where the sun at the center of the system struck it. I ran my fingers absently through Kylo’s hair. 

“Could get used to traveling,” he murmured, almost to himself. “If I got to see your face every time we approached a planet.”  _ Okay, that wasn’t to himself at all, actually. _ I blushed, and turned to nuzzle his neck with my nose and make a squeak of delight. It was also kind of a squeak of terror and fear that I was getting in waaaay too deep, but by now that fear was so familiar and so fucking ever-present that I just… let it be there. There wasn’t shit I could do about it right now, anyway. Behind it was a distant pang of a different fear entirely, about Matt.

“If you could show me any planet I haven’t seen already from above, which one would it be?” I asked quietly _ . Maybe we can at least go see that one together, if we survive this mess.  _ He was silent for a moment, thoughtful. 

“I want to say Coruscant, because even I never quite get over how alive it looks. Even from this far out,” he said finally. “The lights move. It’s never still. I think it would take your breath away, little one.” 

_ Oh fuck, I’m so fucking in love, this SUCKS, _ I thought. 

“But for a natural planet, not covered in a city like Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa, Sullust would be my choice. Its entire population has to live below the surface, because it’s covered in shifting plates of rock, rivers of magma, and beautiful turquoise lakes. And the cities beneath the surface are just as beautiful, if you can believe it.” He was looking down at me, not at the view. I looked up at him. 

“Will you show me, one day?”

“Yes,” he cooed, that one special, sweet smile on his face. “I’d show you every inch of this galaxy you wanted to see, Aeon. And spend the whole time wishing I could see it through your eyes.” 

“You’re being so nice to me, it’s starting to scare me,” I confessed, shrinking in his arms, feeling the chasm in my chest open up.

“Why?” he asked, brow knitting in confusion. “I don’t mean to.”

“I know,” I breathed. “It’s… not your fault. Everything you’re saying is perfect. I’m just scared in general.”

“Me too, little one. But we have to do this.”

“Yeah, we do. Or else the whole galaxy is up shit creek,” I lamented. He laughed, and shook his head.

“One day I’ll ask you to explain all these strange things you say.” 

“One day, maybe I will.” We smiled at each other for a moment, lost in the genuinely upsetting amount of love that was saturating that tiny shuttle. Ugh, it grosses me out to think about it. Which is definitely not me covering up how much I hate being vulnerable. Nope.

His hand came over one of mine, and he guided it to the lever he’d been operating before. 

“Want to help me land?” he asked, his smile turning a little into a grin. I blinked and swallowed. 

“Um... “  _ Okay, but, I kinda really do. _ “Just don’t let me kill us, okay?” He laughed, a small and delighted sound, and something about just seeing him get excited like that made me wanna cry a little. His other hand took my other one, and guided it up to the controls. His face was up close to mine, nose hovering near my cheek. 

“Alright. We’re gonna take her into atmo. This part’s easy,” he began, and I nervously let him guide me through the process of landing. His soft voice was firm and encouraging in my ear, but really he did most of the actual work. When we got to the part where we had to park the shuttle down on the uninhabited end of the island in question, he moved my hands so smoothly and deftly that we touched ground without a jolt. 

“Wow. You’re really good at that,” I told him. The sun was coming up over the island, a flock of porgs nestled into the cliff face a few kilometers away. 

“You will be, too.” He pressed his lips into my temple. “Once you get enough practice.” I was finally starting to just ache horribly every time he talked about our future life together, which I had begun to desperately want, but I blinked back tears and felt the ‘I’m-OK’ mask clamp down over my face.

“We’ll see,” I said, and I played it off like I meant that I doubted I’d ever get good at flying spaceships, instead of doubting I’d even get the chance to be bad at it, much less good. “You ready to go, love?” 

“Not really, but I suppose I can’t just stay here in this shuttle and fuck you until Rey gets over whatever it is that’s bothering her, can I?” He was grinning again, eyes glinting. 

“Tragically, no,” I replied, grinning back in spite of myself. We climbed out of the pilot’s chair, adjusted our perpetually sex-ruffled clothing, and gathered our supplies. I sniffed as I checked our bags, trying to suck the tears that wanted to escape through my nose back where they belonged. It’s so fucked up to be that happy, and just waiting on it to end, y’all. The exit ramp opened, and I attached the bag that had both Kylo and Matt’s lightsabers to my belt. When I looked up, he was standing there backlit, with messy hair, the collar of his shirt hanging like it was too big, smiling at me like he was really,  _ truly _ fucking happy for the first time. I’d never seen that look on his face, and even though I was feeling lowkey miserable about my own future in this fictional universe, seeing him look like that was like a wave of joy that, for a moment, took the sting out.

Then he extended his hand to me. 

“Come on, Aeon.” 

I took his hand, and we marched out into the sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i couldn't miss the opportunity to do some intergalactic road head :3 hehe  
plus these two, i swear to god, they just. they can't keep their hands off each other. so hope y'all enjoyed some smut on the way to some more plot xD
> 
> love y'all!!!!!!


	71. Chapter 71

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I am 100% That Bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RoS spoilers in this chapter.

To put it bluntly, Rey was not happy to see us.

“What the hell are  _ you _ doing here?” she snapped as she turned around from where she was sitting outside of the weird round little huts the fish-people lived in, wrapping up what looked like a cut on her hand. We’d walked up the cobbles with no attempt to be sneaky. I saw her grip her staff, which had been leaning up on the hut beside her. “How are you not dead?” she leveled at Kylo.

“Whoa, chill,” I said, throwing up a hand. “We come in peace, and all that.”

“How did you find me?” Apparently she had too many questions to wait for the answers.

“Luke sent us,” Kylo replied. Letting out a groan, she rolled her eyes now up towards the sky. 

“So now you’re just butting into everyone’s business?” she asked, as though Luke were there. 

“Yes,” came a voice, and Luke’s translucent ghost was standing beside us rather suddenly.  _ Speak to a dead Skywalker and yea his Force Ghost will appear. _ “But only when they’re making a terrible decision that could endanger the entire galaxy.”

“My  _ going _ to Exegol would endanger the entire galaxy!” she retorted. “At least if I stay here there’s a chance.”

“If you go, there’s a much better chance,” Luke said. He was placid, hands behind his back. “But I didn’t just send these two here to harass you. I have my own business with them. So stop taking it so personally.” I stifled a giggle, and hoped Yoda was proud of how much of a troll his protege had become. Rey didn’t think it was very funny, and she glowered at him. 

“Do they know?” she asked the old Jedi in a low voice. “Do they know who you sent them to?” I raised an eyebrow at her, and then glanced up ay Kylo. He looked confused in his stony way, and glanced at me. Then both of our eyes slid over to Luke. 

“They’re here because of what they learned about you from experience, not because of anything else.” He was frowning now, stern. “And, because they want to help you.” Rey’s expression didn’t change much before she looked over at us again. Her eyes landed on Kylo. 

“How did you survive?” She sounded almost small, like she was scared to admit that she was relieved to see him. 

“Aeon healed me,” he replied, squeezing my hand which was still in his. “Through the power of the Force.” 

“You learned Force healing?” Rey was looking at me, now. 

“Uh, more intuited it, actually,” I replied. “I think I had some help, though.” I glanced at Luke. 

“Listen, you may have had an audience, but the healing was all you, kiddo. At least when it came to the wound,” Luke told me with a hint of a grin. I felt my heart swell with pride. 

“With no access to the Jedi texts?” Now Rey was looking at me sidelong, like she wasn’t sure why I should be so powerful.

“Hey now, desert girl,” I said with a frown. “Don’t judge. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” For a split second, she looked both confused and kinda grossed out at the idea of skinning a cat (or whatever Star Wars animal out there had ‘cat’ in its name that she was thinking of), but then her face fell grave again. 

“I wonder how many more nobodies will find out they’re powerful Force users, and then learn where their power actually comes from,” she said, looking down at the bandage she hadn’t tied yet and starting in on the knot. 

“You gonna explain that or just get all cryptic?” I asked. “She learned that shit from you, yanno,” I added to Luke. He rolled his eyes at me. 

“I do think it would be wise for us to truly collaborate this time, Rey,” Kylo piped up. “That does mean we shouldn’t hide things from one another.” 

“Oh, so there’s no barricade of storm troopers here to force me to cooperate this time? How thoughtful.” She glared up at him through her eyebrows. “I don’t want to work with you. I don’t want to work with anyone.” 

“My mother told me that Palpatine’s gathering his forces--”

“Don’t talk to me about Palpatine or about your mother, Kylo Ren.” Now she seemed angry, but almost tearful too. “She died trying to save you.”

“Save me?” Kylo’s brow was wrinkled.

“From the dark side!” She said it like it couldn’t be more obvious. I blinked as I realized that Kylo’s reaction was defensive but not in any of the ways he used to be defensive about being ‘saved.’ It was almost like he’d forgotten the concept of the dark and the light, like the two were no longer relevant to his concept of the Force or his own redemption.  _ Oh, shit.  _

“She forgave me,” he replied. Rey’s eyes met his, and her doubt and anger couldn’t cover the glimmer of hope there. “I owe it to my family to act like I’m worthy of their forgiveness.” Now I squeezed his hand, and he looked down at me with a soft expression. Rey on the other hand looked down to finish tying off her bandage. Then she looked back at all of us, her face still uncertain and frowning. 

“I’d like to be alone now,” she said simply. I looked over at Luke, who just shrugged. 

“Okay. We’ll be here if you need anything,” I told her before turning to Kylo. “We should pick a hut to post up in, right?” He nodded. “Luke, catch ya--”

Luke’s ghost was gone. 

“Around.” I shook my head. “Dead people can afford to be rude, I guess.” Tugging Kylo by the hand I went to go scope out a hut for us that wasn’t too close to the one Rey had claimed, but not too far away either. 

\-----

That night, Kylo was setting up the stuff in our hut while I was wandering around the island in search of some of the tucked-away little Jedi spots from  _ Episode VIII. _ I wasn’t looking for anything specific, to be honest, just wanted to peek around. 

It didn’t occur to me that there was that one creepy-looking seaweed-covered sinkhole that Rey had stumbled into when she first came here, and that according to Luke it was a ‘dark’ place. My theory was that it was just a powerful place and that… well, power both attracts and corrupts, right? My whole view of the Force was shifting more and more away from the idea that there were dark and light sides of it, and more that it was just there. The people who used it were the people who had impulses, fears, and desires that could veer towards one path or the other.

Which is probably why I wasn’t too concerned when the first spot I found was that creepy sinkhole. 

It was massive and the center of it was totally dark. There were two moons out on Ahch-To, so that night was wildly bright, but even in the shadow of the cliff face it was tucked into it seemed darker than everything else around it. And it felt like a tiny black hole tugging me in, pulling me into a nexus of Force energy that was fascinating and beautiful. The back of my head and neck were tingling as I looked down into it.

_ Be careful, _ came a voice in the back of my head. It was Luke’s. He was still nervous about this spot, but apparently wise enough to know better than to try and deter me from checking it out.

“I will,” I murmured, staring down into the black. It was drawing me in past the event horizon, and I fell down into it like I was tunneling through creation--

I was outside my ex’s apartment. You know, the one who abused me?  _ That  _ was off-putting as hell. I turned and looked inside the window that I knew was his, and watched him talking to--  _ me. _ He wasn’t yelling, but I knew he was saying things that would later haunt me. As I watched myself start to get upset and repeat myself, desperate to be heard, suddenly  _ he _ got upset and crumpled to the floor. We were in the kitchen area where the tiles began and the living room carpet ended, and he was beside the cabinets. I faintly heard myself trying loudly to make my point and apologise in the same breath. As he started to shake and rock, he pulled one of the low cabinet doors open and starting banging himself on the forehead with it. Suddenly my distress, my problems, my requests were all lost in a flurry of desperate apologies, tugging him away from the cabinet and taking to the floor to wrap my arms around him and tell him it was okay. Instead of being heard, or cared about, or understood, it was suddenly my responsibility to do all those things for him instead. 

I realized my fists were clenched at my sides, my teeth grinding together. This was one of those moments that probably happened a hundred times with him, not one of the rare moments where things escalated, and that was almost worse. Watching myself pull him to his feet and walk him into the bedroom, I felt my face get hot. When I re-emerged to turn the lights off and lock the front door, suddenly everything shifted. I was under a streetlamp, and now that the window was dark I saw my own reflection in it.

Except instead of myself, I saw a thousand-eyed demon. Terror struck me through the heart, and paralyzed me even as I saw the thing jump towards me and come careening through the glass, getting bigger and bigger until I saw nothing else--

Without warning I was back at college, or one of them anyway, and I was glaring at my roommate whose face was a grayish blur. I don’t remember which one she was-- she could’ve been any of them. But she was saying something mean, something about how I was ‘obviously batshit crazy,’ when I realized that every object in the dorm room was floating. Finally something snapped and they all started to fly through the air towards her--

I was in the meditation room on the Supremacy, looking at Kylo. He was expressionless, uncanny. 

“I don’t know where you’re from. I don’t know who you really are,” he said in a voice that wasn’t like his at all. I tried to say something in response, but I couldn’t hear my own voice--

I was inside a hospital room, looking at myself again this time. Other-me sat on the bed, hair disheveled and dark circles a foot thick under my eyes. I stared at a woman, a therapist, who was taking notes as she asked me questions. 

“And do you know who you really are?” she asked, which made no sense for a therapist to ask. 

“What?” I asked out loud, thoughtlessly. The other-me did nothing, but the therapist’s head turned around to look at me with icy blue eyes, short blonde hair, and the complexion of a corpse.  _ Is that… Phasma? _

I screamed as her upper half toppled onto the floor, dead eyes still staring at me after she landed--

In the medical bay, Lucky loomed over me where I lay on the bed in my alcove. But its face was now a television screen, and static ran over it as he spoke in a voice that was more scratchy and faded than his really was. 

“Your wave-particle function is wildly unstable,” he said. “Do you not want it to level out? It is the only unstable part of your scan.”

“What?” I asked, my voice coming to my ears as though I were speaking underwater.

“Everything is almost perfect, Aeon. If you stabilize your wave-particle function you will be completely normal. Is that not what you want?”

“No,” I tried to say.

“We may be forced to declare you unfit to make a reasonable decision for your own sake if you choose this, Aeon. We are worried about your well-being, and your happiness.” I felt horrified and confused, despite the fact that I was becoming more and more aware that I was on some kind of nightmarish roller coaster ride through my own trauma history, propelled by the Force. 

“Nobody knows what makes me happy or well except me!” I insisted. Suddenly Leia’s face appeared on the TV screen of Lucky’s head, and my eyes flew wide open. 

“Listen kid. You’re not doing yourself any favors listening to these people. There’s only one person you need to listen to,” she said, and she sounded more like Carrie Fisher than Leia. 

“Myself?” I asked the TV-Leia. She winked, and then the screen went back to being fuzzy--

I was standing outside the hut where Rey was staying, watching through the narrow window as she tended the fire inside it. She sat facing away from me, and it looked like she was holding two lightsaber hilts, but I couldn’t quite see which ones

“You can fix this,” she said, and my brow knit. “You can make everything right.” I tilted my head to peer around inside the hut to see who she was talking to. 

“I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it,” came a voice that was so familiar that it froze my heart. I leaned far enough over to see Matt’s blonde head bowed down as he sat on the other stone bench by the fire. 

“What other choice do you have?” Rey asked, and she handed him a saber that I realized was his. He looked up and took it from her, a dark expression on his face. Like I was in a fucking horror movie, they both turned around and looked directly at me. I heard an unmistakable high-pitched noise, and both of them turned on their sabers. Matt’s was red, and Rey’s was two-pronged and red just like in the vision I’d had of the knife--

Darkness. A faint, dank smell and the drip of water like I was inside a cave. My heart was racing, but I stepped carefully through as beams of faint light started to drift down. I was inside some raggedy structure full of pieces of rotting equipment and stalactites, picking my way through the mess. Finally the space opened up before me, becoming a cavern of sorts. There was a throne carved into the rock at the head of the room, and beside it a strange contraption hanging from above. In the low light I couldn’t tell what it was. The closer I got to it, the less I liked it. 

_ Aeon, _ came a voice, and I turned around to see Luke standing behind me. His presence wasn’t ghostly, but it still felt paper-thin as opposed to the Force-dreams I had where I saw him looking solid and real. Like a hallucination, there was a strangely superimposed quality to him even though I couldn’t tell you what it was that made him look like that.

**Aeon,** came another, much less friendly voice. I turned back to the dangling thing and almost jumped when I saw the pallid, bloated face of Palpatine looking out at me through white glassy eyes beneath a hood. He was half rot, connected to wires and cables that trailed up the arm of the machine he was rigged to. 

“Oh, what the fuck?” I exclaimed, dismayed to put it very fucking mildly. 

** _You can end this,_ ** they both said at once.  ** _Right now. You have a power none of us have. You were chosen because you’re the only one who can fix everything. Make everything as it should be. _ **

“I hate this,” I said, shaking my head. “This is bullshit and you know it.” Honestly I have no idea who I was really talking to, whether it was Palps or Luke or the Force or myself. “I already tried to fix everything and it didn’t work. It doesn’t work.”

** _Did you have the power of the Force, then? _ **

“Fuck,” I muttered. Of course I hadn’t had the Force. I was referring to my life before I got zapped into a space opera, when I tried to fix everything I could except myself. But that question had me thinking, if I’m being real with y’all. Maybe if I just… did it the right way…

** _Think about it._ **

When I looked up at where Palps was dangling, I jumped when I say Rey there in his place. Her stare was terrifying as it pierced me through her white, glassy eyes.

“Aeon,” came yet another voice, and I turned to see Kylo where Luke had been standing. “What are you going to do?” My heart was banging around in my chest, and I officially no longer wanted to be having this Force vision. It was getting more and more ominous by the second. 

“I-- I don’t know--” He was looking at me with that same empty expression he’d had earlier in the meditation room. The more people I saw in this vision, the more they all seemed like imposters even when they should’ve seemed normal; weird doubles with much more sinister intentions. And that was a symptom that had thrown me so far off-track in the past that my blood ran cold when I turned to see Matt approaching me from the side.

“You have to choose,” the blonde said. 

“Stop it,” I said, clenching my fists at my side. “Tell me something I  _ don’t _ have regular bouts of anxiety about!” 

“Where does your power come from?” asked Rey, and I turned to look at her. “Who’s name is in your blood?”

All of a sudden I realized the metaphor. 

“Oh holy shit, I totally called that Rey was a Palpatine after I saw  _ The Force Awakens! _ ” I said, almost laughing to myself. “Fuckin’ knew it! Eat a dick, JJ.”

“Answer me!” Rey’s voice was harsh, not really hers at all. I glared at her, no longer fooled by the deep levels of fuckery going on in the Force at that moment, and put my hands on my hips.

“Nice try, asshole. But my power comes from myself,” I said. The strangled howl of rage that filled the air was definitely Palpatine’s voice, and he flew towards me like a badly rigged theater fly-rail ghost. My hand flew to my lightsaber--

And then I was on the cave floor, lying next to the creepy hole full of tangled seaweed or whatever it was, looking up through the crevice in the stone at the stars. I panted, out of breath and very cold. 

_ Nice job, kid. _ I smirked at nothing as Luke’s voice whispered in my head. My bones ached as I hauled myself upright, officially worn out and not super interested in hanging out with the Force again anytime soon. It was always a fucking doozy, like no wonder there was so much Jedi and Sith drama. I was grateful it wasn’t actually that far of a walk back to the hut. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aww yeah Aeon gettin BIG STRONG. now if Rey can just get with the program... >_>
> 
> just a short chapter with some trippy character and plot development for y'all <3


	72. Chapter 72

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo gets a tiny taste of his own medicine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahoy, there be smut ahead!

“Aeon, are you alright?” Kylo asked almost as soon as I reentered the warm orange light of our temporary island getaway. “I felt something--”

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” I reassured him. He was already coming over to me as I shut the door, putting his hands on my shoulders. 

“You’re so cold.” Now he rubbed my upper arms gently, causing goosebumps to jump up all over them from the temperature difference. “What happened out there? Did you find anything?” 

“There’s this gnarly spot on the island that Luke seems to think is like, full of dark side energy or something. I dunno about all that, but it is powerful, so I kinda ended up there.” I shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Anyway it took me on a helluva trip, but I’m back now.” 

“Oh really?” He raised an eyebrow and brought me even closer to him, close enough that I habitually pressed my hands up against his torso and the worn fabric of the black shirt he was wearing. 

“I think Palpatine was trying to fuck with me, actually.” I was slowly losing focus on my thoughts as his hands ran all over my back under my tank top, smearing trails of warmth over my chilled skin. “But it didn’t work.” 

“I look forward to putting a saber through him,” Kylo growled softly, some of his signature scowl returning to his face. 

“You think that’ll be all it takes?” I asked. “Maybe you have to do something specific like cut his head off, or set him on fire.” I was thinkin’ zombies, lowkey.

“I’ll do whatever I must to protect you, little one,” he said quietly, one hand stroking my fluffy head. “Together, we’ll finish it.” 

“Rey has to come, too,” I reminded him. “I’m… pretty sure she’s descended from Palpatine, Kylo. That’s what I realized in my vision just now. I think that’s what she’s afraid of.” His face fell in surprise, and then he looked out the high sliver of a window towards where hers was even though it wasn’t very visible from here. 

“A Palpatine…” I could feel the physical sensations in his body, the working of his jaw and the tensing of his shoulders and the twist in his heart. “That’s… are you sure?”

“Pretty damn sure.” _ If only because it’s so fucking predictable. _

“I guess I can see why she doesn’t want to go to Exegol, then,” he murmured finally, face turning back to me. “And why she’s so powerful.”

“Yeah she’s gotta sit with that awhile before she’s gonna go anywhere,” I said. “Hopefully not too long, though, if your mom’s warning is as dire as I’m worried it is.”

“We’ll see.” I felt the back of one of his fingers trace up my cheek to my temple. “Perhaps you can show her what you’ve shown me.” 

“What’s that?” I asked, feeling myself brighten with curiosity and blush at the same time. 

“That our choices are what matters. More than anything else.” He looked sober as a stone, looking into my eyes with his full of the amber glow of the firelight. A smile crept over my face. 

“You put it better than I have. I might have to steal that for the book I’m publishing.” 

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow once more, this time playfully. “A wise treatise on why the Force isn’t good or bad? I wonder what my uncle would think.”

“He’s radicalized in his old age,” I replied. “He’s not that down with the Jedi these days. You should talk to him about it sometime.”

“Perhaps I will.” His smile was soft, and honestly the lighting was incredibly becoming on him. I pressed myself against him, starting to crave his warmth. 

“Kylo, I’m still so cold.” He tugged me towards the fire, and towards a sleeping nest he’d conjured out of the sea-grass mats and woven blankets of the fish-people. _ Wow, that’s so cute. _

“Come here, little thing,” he said, voice silky and quiet. We nestled in, and he wrapped himself around me while facing me, one arm under my head and the other wrapped around my waist as our legs entangled. “How’s this?”

“Will you rub my back?” I asked, swooning a little like I always did when he held me like that.

“Of course.” His hands on my back started to move in gentle strokes, causing my nerves to tingle pleasantly and warmth to start to sink in. His eyes watched me, and I was fascinated by his expression. There was this tiny smile that hadn’t left his face very many times since we’d returned from Kef Bir that lurked even when he wasn’t saying anything; an overwhelming presence of latent joy that was so unfamiliar as to be exhilarating on his face. For a long few moments, I just stared at him and he stared back at me. 

“What are you thinking about?” I asked him finally. 

“You.” I blushed immediately and gave a faint giggle.

“Oh…” _ Well, I genuinely wasn’t expecting that. _

“I’m thinking about how much I love to watch you-- your eyes, your mouth. I love your sweet little hands in my hair and on my skin. I love your neck, how soft it is, and your shoulders that are so strong.” He was still smiling that faint smile, and I could tell he knew that I was embarrassed to hear such a litany of nice things about myself as my blush got deeper and I glanced away, smiling uncontrollably. This only seemed to spur him on. “I love how little and fierce you are, how big your heart is, the gentle things you say. Your beautiful voice. How brave and lovely and rare and precious you are.”

“Wow, Kylo…” I murmured, looking back up at him with wide eyes. His arms drew tighter around me, drew me even more close and pressed up against him. 

“I’m thinking about how grateful I am that you allow me to teach you. How lucky I am that you get angry with me when I deserve it, and love me even when I think I don’t deserve it.”

“You always do,” I almost whispered, my heart starting to flutter as our gazes locked.

“I’m thinking about how perfect it feels when your skin is against mine,” he cooed, and one of his hands slipped under the fabric of my shirt. My breath hitched. “How soft your lips are.” Now his head leaned down closer to mine, our mouths hovering so very close. I could feel my whole body beating with my heart. 

“Kylo…”

“I love the way you sound when I touch you.” He was tugging my shirt up now, and I was turning into putty in his ample hands. Gently he removed the garment, and went back to touching my skin; he pulled one hand over my ribs as the other cradled my head and neck. His thumb came over my nipple and I let out a tiny little gasp, moaning softly. “I love your belly,” he continued, hand roving down over it before it skimmed over my hip and down my thigh, then back up over my butt. “And your legs. And your ass. And your back.” He ran the tips of his fingers up my spine, causing a powerful shiver to shoot through me. Then his hand was back at my hip, and slowly he began to push it and turn me onto my back, leaning over me with my head still in his other hand. I sucked in slow, deep breaths, and was fully bewitched with my eyes still locked on his as I watched his pupils slowly dilating.

“Oh…” He ran his fingers across my hips, over my crotch through the soft fabric of my pants. “Kylo…”

“And I love your powerful little cunt,” he purred, slipping that hand under my waistband. I opened my legs to give him better access. A finger swiped up from my entrance-- which I hadn’t even realized was soaking me through, I was so totally enthralled-- up to my clit, and my hips jerked ever so slightly. 

“Fuck, Kylo,” I breathed, and I knew I sounded like a broken record but he was all I could think about or pay attention to in that moment.

“I never stop thinking about the way my name sounds in your mouth, little one.” Another gasp as his fingers started a slow swirl around my bud. I gripped the blanket we were on top of in my hands, and my mouth hung open while electricity crackled through me. “How full it sounds. How whole and real, like you don’t wish you were saying a different name.” 

I was suspended from his gaze, limp as his hand worked me and my skin flushed. When he slid two fingers inside me, my eyelids fluttered and I mewled. I could feel his cock pressed up against my leg through his pants, but he held me still and did what he wanted with me. Apparently what he wanted was to watch me wither under his tender dominance. Fingers pressed into my g-spot and started to curl, winding me up from my center.

“Oh-- oh my God--”

“I’m thinking about how perfectly we fit together,” he said, voice gone husky. “How you let me fuck you. How you devour me, so eager to fall apart. I’m thinking of how it might feel to let you have me, to be desperate for you, wholly at your mercy.” The pace of his hand was slow and just getting firmer and firmer, bringing up the edge one intense movement at a time. His palm rubbed against my clit, making my thighs start to shake.

“K-Kylo--”

“Just as you are wholly at mine.” He pinned me to the mat with his eyes, black puddles of adoration and lust reflecting the flicker of the fire. Now he was gripping the back of my head a little more firmly, with more urgency. He propped himself up on one elbow, leaning over me more fully and beginning to work his arm from the shoulder which made his movement that much more powerful and the waves of pleasure that rippled out from them that much more intense. My eyes sparkled.

“I-- I--”

“Don’t cum until I tell you to, little one. I want to make you transcendent.” My eyes widened, and I felt the muscle wall of my pelvis clench up trying to control myself. I let out little _ ah ah _ sounds with my panting exhales, clinging to lucidity. “That’s it, sweet thing,” he said softly. “Just like that. Hold it in. I can feel you.”

“I-- fuck--”

“You’re getting closer.” I thought I might be going blind as I clenched around my own orgasm, and his devastating slow pace and deep pressure were making it harder than it ever had been to follow his commands. My breaths got shallower and my limbs limp as all my energy went into my pelvic floor.

“Kylo--”

“Almost there, little one.” 

“Please-- Kylo-- _ fuck-- _”

“So close, shhh, you can do it.” I was whimpering faintly, my legs starting to wobble loosely from the hip sockets like some pitiful marionette. “You feel incredible, Aeon. I feel you in my bones.”

“Ha-- _ hn-- _ aah--”

“Are you almost ready, little one?”

“Hnnnn! Yes!” I barely managed to squeak out.

“Say my name when you cum, alright?” I nodded as much as I could, eyes unwavering from his. “It sounds so beautiful when you say it.”

“Pl-- _please--_”

“Take a deep breath,” he instructed, and as soon as I did, the dam burst.

“Kyyyyyylllooooooooo-o-o-o-ooooo!” I bawled, going ragged at the last as I nearly exploded from within. I heard his strokes turn slushy and slippery under the stream of cum that exited me violently on the heels of a bright, hot crush of pleasure and a scald over my nerves. The pressure on his fingers must’ve been terrific, as I clamped down on them with every ounce of strength I had and pushed my orgasm out of myself in waves of shuddering abandon.

His hand steadily decreased in pressure and speed, drawing out the convulsions that wracked me in a languid sort of way that kept me from feeling profoundly overwhelmed. Rather I just felt like he knew how to magically extend an orgasm for way longer than it made any sense for one to go on, but far be it from me to complain. I gasped for air, and everything around me smelled of him. My eyes rolled and swam around, but I saw nothing. Finally his hand was still against me, but he kept it between my legs like he was afraid to remove it lest it ruin the slow, perfect ebb of sensations. He pressed our foreheads together, and I could tell he was breathing heavily too. 

After a few moments, my sight started to return. His face drew back away from mine and slowly my eyes focused on each individual mole and freckle on his skin, each eyelash, every line in his pouty lips. Then back to his eyes, my eternal homing beacon. As he drew his hand slowly away from my cunt and out of my soaked trousers, he brought it up to thrust his own fingers into his mouth and lick them clean. I watched with rapt attention, unsure how I was supposed to handle being aroused again just after such a monumental climax. 

He pressed his now slick lips into mine, and eased his tongue into my mouth to spread my own juices around within it. The hot, wet softness of his kiss made me feel like melting butter. My tongue was lazy and sluggish but it danced with his anyway, and I nipped his lower lip just to prove I wasn’t useless despite my total lack of muscle tension. 

“I can’t believe you just did that to me,” I murmured as his lips made for my jaw and neck. He hummed against my throat, and I sighed. 

“You should see yourself,” he husked, hand coming up against my cheek. “You’re a vision.”

“I have no idea what to say when you say that shit to me.” I was feeling tiny shockwaves from where his mouth pressed against the skin below my ear, his tongue on my earlobe. 

“I only want you to listen, little one,” he said. “Not reply.”

“Oh.” _ Well, that’s good, because Jesus fucking Christ. _ His hand nudged my face back towards his so he could start kissing me again, tongue prying deeper this time as his hand wandered down to my waistband to start peeling my pants off. I helped him by kicking them away, and then my hands slid up under his shirt. He broke our kiss long enough to tug it off, but was back immediately after. His movements were somehow charged with energy while also being indulgent, relishing every sensation. I unclasped his trousers with familiar ease, and hummed into his mouth as I found his hot, stiff cock and stroked its soft skin delicately. His chest heaved in a huge breath, but he refused to stop the kiss as I began to stroke him with the same intense, slow movements. 

Slowly, I began to push myself upright, to ease him backwards much as he had done to me. When he was on his back, I tangled my free hand in his black hair and massaged the underside of the broad head of his cock with my thumb while he pushed his pants off fully.

“I want to fuck you,” I purred into his mouth, and he moaned. It was the single most vulnerable sound he’d ever made around me, in that I could hear how much he finally felt like he could sound anything but dominant. I tugged gently on his hair, and felt a tremor run through his powerful body. I lifted my leg to climb onto him, to grind my wetness against his length. “Don’t move me with your hands,” I ordered him quietly. “Let me do the work.”

This moan was lower, more ragged than the first. His eyes were glazed as he looked up at me, balling the blanket in his fists. My heart started to pick up at the sight of him bracing to surrender, how badly he wanted it. I kept up with grinding into him, rubbing my clit on his sensitive spot. Warmth rippled out through me, like my body no longer possessed the capacity to tense in response to the feeling of my nerves lighting up. He was breathing hard, looking down at the head of his cock as it appeared and reappeared beneath my folds, a drop of precum leaking onto his stomach. When I slid up and it just barely begin to slip into my entrance, I felt him tighten beneath me. 

“Shit,” he hissed as I let his cock stand up more fully and balanced over him. Gently I pushed down, letting just the tip of him in. His eyes wandered from below up to mine, and I watched him intently as I swiveled my hips just a little. His mouth fell open in the most satisfying way. 

“Kylo, you’re so gorgeous,” I murmured as I pushed down a little farther and tugged on his hair again. He moaned, staring at me. “I’ve never seen anyone like you. Your body is so powerful, so _beautiful_ shaking under me like this.” I slid my pelvis up and down, fucking just the first couple of inches of him, feeling the amazing sensation of his broad head entering me over and over again. “I-- fuck-- I love how much I can _feel_ you.” 

“Aeon,” he groaned, hips jerking. I stalled my movements.

“No, big boy. You have to be still,” I said, voice low. A strange sound exited him, quiet and frustrated and hungry. “Lie back and let your apprentice make you feel as perfect as you make me feel, mkay? I want to see you weak for me.”

“Aeon,” he said again, this time in more of a quiet sigh like his heart was oozing around in his chest right along with his profound arousal as he stared raptly up at me. Slowly I resumed my motions, sucking in air and groaning as I felt him open me up a few more times. I sank down further and watched him tense beneath me, holding back his urge to rut. 

“Very good.” I held still but squeezed my inner walls around him repeatedly. This seemed to surprise him, and his jaw trembled a little. I combed my fingers through his hair as I contracted around him, then sank down further to finally slide him in to the hilt. “Fuck, your cock is _ so _good, Kylo. It feels like there’s nothing more perfect to be inside me.”

He just let out a tiny whimper as I tugged his hair in a few different places until I found one that made him whimper louder than the others. The pressure was fantastic, and after my first orgasm I was in no hurry to batter my lower half. I wanted to draw it out, hold him on the edge. I nuzzled his neck, licked over his Adam’s apple, and found a nice soft place to suck on while I finally began to slowly grind my hips against him. Now his moans got louder, his grip on the blanket stronger. I left a big purple mark on his neck, which seemed only fair. When I looked back at his face, he was slack-jawed and flushed. 

“_Fuck-- _ Aeon--”

“You look so pretty right now,” I cooed, pushing a little harder into his hips. “You’re so strong when you fuck me. Even when you’re sweet, you control everything. How does it feel to let me fuck you?” 

“Incredible,” he said breathlessly. I worked my inner walls in tandem with my movements, sliding up and down on him and rocking. His breathing was ragged, shoulders starting to tense. 

“You’re so perfect. So much better behaved than I am,” I said, smirking. I rocked and rocked and kept my pace constant, persistent. I could start to feel my own body tightening, pressure building, on a slow train to the precipice. I could feel his body, too; he was inching closer to the edge, surprised by all the new sensations he was unused to, was not expecting. I shifted into more direct thrusts, letting his length slam up deep into me and moaning more loudly. Now his nostrils flared, and he watched me move like he’d never seen something so captivating. But his breath was getting faster, and I felt him tightening like a spring. My hips stalled with him sunk fully inside me and he whimpered. 

“Aeon, please,” he pleaded. 

“Not yet,” I told him gently, running a finger over his lips. I wished for a string of some kind to tie his cock off with, but these weren’t prime conditions for improvised sex toys and I was pretty sure that if there were cock rings in space, we were about are far away from them as you could get. So I sat still, tracing lines down his neck and chest, rubbing his nipples gently which made him suck in a deep breath. 

Experimentally, I clenched my walls around his majestic length. He moaned and sagged into the bed, and I felt him actually get less tense beneath me as a wave of pleasure rolled over him. He threw his head back and looked at me from under his heavy eyelids, hair tousled around his face. I was taken with his beauty, for a moment, and felt myself clench again although it was less intentional this time. He almost bucked his hips, but caught himself. 

“Oh, gooood boy,” I cooed, stroking his cheek. 

“Aeon, please fuck me,” he murmured, and I finally felt a wave of desperation from him. 

“I am fucking you,” I pointed out sweetly. “Would you like me to fuck you harder?”

“Yes, _ please,_” he sighed, groaning. I rocked my hips once more before leaning forward, one hand braced on his chest and the other gripping his jaw with gentle firmness. He shuddered, and I felt him twitch inside me. 

“Such a big strong thing,” I said, rocking my hips again. “Begging for me.”

“Fuck,” he hissed. Finally I took mercy on him and started my thrusting motions again, bouncing up and down on his cock and moaning as it started to wind me up quick. Panting, I looked down at him and tugged his chin back towards me.

“Look at me, Kylo.” I heard the faintest little mewl, and that just turned me on even more. His black eyes were hooked into mine, totally pliant and obedient. I felt the edge looming for both of us. “Do you want me to cum around your big, lovely cock?”

“Yes,” he growled, but it was the least aggressive sound.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, please.” I felt a smirk on my face. _ How the tables have turned. _

“Good boy.” I picked up my pace, faster and deeper. “Fuck-- you feel _ so _ good inside me.” He was letting out noises on his exhales now, and his eyes pleaded more vehemently than any other part of him. I felt myself teetering on the edge, everything inside me tightening up. “I’m so close-- Kylo-- _ shit--_”

“Aeon!” I felt him start shaking with the effort not to start pounding up into me with his hips, but as my orgasm finally crashed over me my pace got uneven. So I let him start to rut, though his hands stayed by his sides on the bed. I whimpered as he did, slammed through with warmth and release, and felt him start to spill inside me. He growled as he rode out his orgasm on the tail of mine, hips finally collapsing under me. 

I held myself up on his chest, lolling even as our gazes were still locked. Now he reached up to put his hands on my face, to tug me down to him while he caught his breath and wrapped his arms around me. I could hear, behind our panting, the crackle of the slowly dying fire and the distant, eternal crashing of the sea. 

“Ah, little one,” he sighed eventually. “You’re amazing.” My smile against his neck was self-satisfied, of course. 

“From you, that’s the highest compliment.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” I ruffled his hair. “Thanks. For letting me fuck you, for once.” 

“I’ll have to let you do it more often,” he murmured. 

“Mmm,” I hummed. “I like the sound of that.” I could feel him smirking. He stroked my head. After a while I towed myself off him reluctantly and helped him right the blankets a little, pulling a big soft one over us. The fire was nothing but coals, by then, and the moonlight fell in a streak through the window. 

“Sleep well, little one,” he murmured, wrapped around me like a big snuggly bear. 

“You too, Kylo,” I sighed. I didn’t know if it was the successful tango with the Force earlier, or the fact that Kylo was in full flower as a wholesome dom and had just experimented with submission, or the fact that we weren’t on a First Order ship but instead on an actual planet full of life... but I couldn’t let myself dwell on the things that were bothering me. Couldn’t start stressing about Palpatine, or about Rey, or even about beautiful Matt who I missed so terribly. For a moment, at least, I just let myself be content. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, how could I deny a request for more Fluffy Stuff with Kylo????? uwu
> 
> y'all the best ever <3


	73. Chapter 73

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trauma really be like that, y'all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some confusing and potentially slightly distressing smut in this chapter because weird bad things are happening in certain people's brains. it's not extreme at all, but i am placing a lowkey content warning on it anyway.

I must’ve been more tired than I realized, because when Kylo woke up the next morning and gently extricated himself from our little nest, I just turned over and drifted back off. I felt him bend down to kiss my cheek and murmur to me to rest as long as I wanted to, and barely heard him shut the door of the hut before I was asleep again. 

When I woke up, the sun was out and Kylo wasn’t home still. I ate a ration bar and got dressed, then decided to take a walk around the island (in the other direction from the Spooky Seaweed Butthole of the Force.) I wandered through the village and then out over some of the green parts of the island, listening to the ocean as it rumbled about below. I felt calm, despite being aware that there were many things I didn’t need to be calm about. So when I saw Rey meditating on the grass up a hill, I decided to just go see what would happen if I tried to talk to her. 

“You can sit,” she said as I approached her from behind, trying not to make a ton of noise or be obtrusive. 

“Thanks,” I replied, and took a spot nearby her in the grass. She was cross-legged and her hands were in her lap, eyes closed. I just sat with my knees bent, crossing my arms over them, looking out over the mess of rocks that jutted up out of the sea past the nearby hang of the cliffs. I was silent for a while, not trying to push her into talking. It paid off. 

“Why are you here? I mean, really?” she asked, and I saw her peek at me with one open eye. 

“I’m here ‘cause Luke told us you were here.”

“I don’t mean on the island. I mean why are you with Kylo, but also trying to help me?” I glanced at my toes (I’d decided to go barefoot as it was a gorgeous day outside) and wriggled them. 

“That’s also because of Luke, technically.”

“It’s not just that. Kylo said you healed him. Why?” Now she looked at me, her hands on her calves. She was serious, but not hostile. 

“Because I love him, and because his story isn’t over yet,” I replied, looking back at her. “Neither is yours. Or mine.” 

“You want what the Resistance wants, then?” she asked.

“I want the threat of Palpatine eliminated, I want the First Order gone, and I want Kylo and Matt and Ben to start healing from all the shit that’s happened to them.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that what the Resistance wants, too?”

“I’m sure they want those things, or did when Leia was still with them.” She seemed sad, and looked at the ground. “I wonder if they’d welcome Kylo back, now.” 

“I guess it’s not that farfetched to think they might not,” I murmured, struck suddenly by the fact that she had a really good point. A point that I was not crazy about. “But I admit I hoped he’d have a place here that he could go back to.”

“He doesn’t have to come back to the Resistance,” she suggested. “There’s loads of systems he could go to, places he could start a new life.”

“I’m almost one hundred percent sure he’s gonna hate that idea,” I groaned. “Then again, I guess his whole family’s dead. Maybe he can travel…” I remembered his voice when he said that he’d show me anything in the galaxy I wanted to see, and felt my chest ache. 

“He could take the Falcon,” Rey mused. “I think they’d let him have his father’s ship. It’s not that I don’t want him to come back,” she added quickly, looking at me. “I do. I’m just… if he’s unwelcome, I feel like he won’t want to stay. I wouldn’t.”

“Is there even gonna be a Resistance if we manage to lay out Palpatine and the First Order anyway?” I pointed out. “I mean, would you try and rebuild the Jedi Order or something?”

“No,” she said decidedly. “Luke said it was time for the Jedi to end. I know Kylo would probably agree with him. What about you?” I blinked, surprised she would ask me that question. But I realized that I had no idea what I’d do when this was over, because I’d always assumed I’d go back to my own universe. Even traveling the galaxy with Kylo, Matt, and Ben seemed like a fever dream, an impossibility to the degree that even if I wanted to do it (read: I totally wanted to do it) I would never say I _ planned _ on it.

“I… dunno.” I looked out at the clear blue horizon. “I really wanted to go home, once.”

“And you don’t now?” She seemed like she could relate to that more than I’d expected._ I guess she’s not exactly dying to go back to scavenging parts on Jakku. _

“It’s not the same. I have a family. I have a life. Or, I had one. It might not’ve been the best one, but it… well, it was my life. I don’t know if I can just leave it behind.” I felt tears stinging my eyes. 

“Who is your family?” she asked, and I felt a strange sense of foreboding creep into her voice. I looked back at her. 

“Nobody you’ve heard of,” I told her a little icily. “I know your secret, by the way. You don’t have to hide it.” 

“What are you talking about?” Now she looked surprised, and not in a good way.

“I know you’re descended from Sheev Palpatine, Rey. It’s okay.” 

“It’s _ not _ okay. It’s actually the most horrible and frightening thing I’ve ever learned about myself,” she retorted sharply. 

“Your lineage is the worst thing you’ve ever learned about yourself?” The question was rhetorical, and I was annoyed. “Gee, that’s so hard. Imagine being told your brain doesn’t work and you’ll be seeing things that aren’t real for the rest of your life. And then not being able to blame it on your family because it doesn't seem to be genetic.” This was, of course, extremely unhelpful and frankly kinda rude. I guess I was tired of chasing her ass down. 

“You don’t understand,” she hissed, and started to climb up onto her feet. “None of you understand.” 

“Don’t I?” I was frowning back at her. “I use the Force too, yanno. I’ve approached some bad fucking calls using it before, some power I was afraid of. You don’t see me trying to run away. It’s not like you to be scared.” 

“You don’t know me,” she replied, her frown severe. “You don’t know what it means to have the power that he has.” 

“Luke’s father was Darth Vader, and he was Kylo’s grandfather,” I reminded her as she stood up and began marching away. “Maybe you should talk to them! They _ might _ get it!” But she was gone, and she didn’t look back at me. I sighed. _ Good job, idiot. You lost your patience and did the opposite of say something helpful. _ Flopping onto my back in the grass, I covered my eyes with my hand so the sun wouldn’t blind me. 

“Fuck. Maybe I need to work on my own problems for a minute,” I groaned at nobody. I laid there in the sun for a while, my mind running through everything that was shitty about my present situation. Since that didn’t help at all, I tried to think of a few positives. 

_ Well, you’re pretty badass with the Force and your lightsaber now, _ the Voice of Reason said. _ You haven’t been terribly unwell for a while. Kylo’s on the redemption path, too. Ben is growing up. Luke’s proud of you. And, you avoided getting fucked with by Palpatine last night. _ I sighed, feeling less than comforted but a little better. After a while, though, I was tired of laying on the ground doing nothing. I got up to keep wandering around the island, hoping to either bump into Kylo or bump into Rey again so I could apologize for being kind of a dick. 

I had been wandering like that for a while, trying to catch a porg (harder than it sounds, y’all), when I realized that the sun was setting and I still hadn’t seen or heard from Kylo. Getting anxious, I started to wander more towards the Jedi-stuff side of the island. I figured I’d wind my way back to the village if I didn’t find him, and see if he was back in the hut. It was vaguely confusing when I realized I couldn’t exactly feel my connection with him-- I mean, it was there, but it wasn’t calling to me, wasn’t as energized as usual.

When I arrived at the creepy sinkhole again, I was more afraid than I was surprised._ Am I supposed to be here, or is something wrong? _

Then, I saw Kylo sitting with his head in his hands facing towards the precipice, the fading sunlight striking him from the opening in the cliff wall. He felt far away, like our connection wasn’t any more vital than it had been all day even though he was feet away. 

“Kylo?” I asked, walking right over to him. He was wobbling a little, and pushed his hair away from his face to look up at me with weary eyes. 

“Aeon?” he replied, voice strange and weak. “I don’t know where I’ve been. How’d I get here?” 

“I dunno, but we’d better get you home,” I said, putting my arm on his shoulder. His hand came up to wrap around mine-- or try to, but he seemed unable to keep a grip on anything. That made me more anxious. “Do you feel alright?” 

“No.” He leaned, tried to stagger to his feet. But he couldn’t grip my arm, and fumbled back to the rocky ground. “Ugh, my head hurts.” He covered his face with his hands, and I knelt beside him. 

“Shh, it’s okay,” I said softly to him, reaching to stroke his dark hair with my hand. “Just take a moment. Breathe.” His chest rose and fell beneath his shirt. I could feel the energy of the nearby black hole or whatever it was, but it didn’t reach towards me like it had before. I figured it might’ve drawn Kylo in and put him through a joyride of his own. “I’m here, love.”

“I don’t remember…” His voice faded, and finally he uncovered his face only to reach up and take mine in both his hands. His eyes were bleary, foggy, like he was only half-present. But he pulled me towards him, pulled my lips against his and kissed me. The energy coming from him was unstable, almost frantic. He gripped my face like he was afraid he would lose it if he let go, his lips crushed mine and his tongue sought its way between my teeth. I felt a strange combination of warmth blossoming in my belly and fear shivering under my skin, uncertain exactly what was going on. 

“Kylo,” I murmured, pulling away from him just a little. “What’s wrong?”

“I want to come back,” he murmured, voice strained. “Please.” He was kissing me again, sitting up and gripping my side with one hand. The other suddenly snaked between my legs, rubbing my against my clit through the fabric of my pants. My breath hitched despite my surprise, lust bubbling up inside me. His movements weren’t gentle, and they sent sparks jolting through me.

“Fuck,” I swore into his mouth, and then he was turning me onto my back and pushing my legs apart to sink his hips down between them, pressing his still-clothed crotch against mine. He bit my bottom lip.

“I want you,” he growled. I wasn’t sure what was happening with his extremely chaotic energy at that moment, but I was turned on as hell and I couldn’t think of any better way to help him ‘come back,’ whatever that meant. So I just moaned, feeling how hard he was between both of our layers or clothing. Gripping his torso beneath his shirt, I sank my nails into his skin as he ground against me. This seemed to spark something in his eyes, and he pulled his face away from mine and grabbed me by the throat more harshly than he had in a long time. Pressing my head and neck back against the rock, I wheezed against his pressure on my windpipe. 

I was surprised when he pinched one of my nipples through my shirt really hard, and I tried to yelp. He stopped choking me but kept his huge hand around my chin, pushing my head back hard while I coughed and actually yelped this time as he pulled my tank top up over the nipple he was interested in and squeezed it harshly. He bent his head down to bite my exposed neck, and I jerked against him. I was shocked, to be honest, by his sudden and inexplicable roughness-- and maybe a little concerned about it; but at the same time I was kinda really into it? 

“Fuck!” His bite got harder at the end, not quite breaking the skin and sending a hot lash of pain through my nerves. Just enough pain to make my clit stiffen, my core tighten. He ground into me again, and I tried to wrap my arms around his body-- but they flew above my head, pinned to the rock by the Force, and my eyes widened as he slapped my other nipple. “Kylo!”

“You like pain, hm?” he growled against my throat. He slapped it again, and I gasped. “Don’t you?” 

“Kylo, I--”

“Stop it,” he said, pulling his head up to glare at me through his eyebrows. His look was dark, gone past feral and into wild, fevered even. I felt a shiver of fear run up my spine suddenly. His hands were on my waistband and yanking my pants off, fingers pressing hard up against my clit. “This isn’t a game, Aeon.” 

“What--?” Two fingers were inside me, pushing up against my g-spot, and for a second I almost forgot how much I was starting to feel worried and even uncomfortable as a huge wave of pleasure burst out from that place inside me. I shook and groaned, and then his other hand found my neck again and pushed against my airway. He kept pumping his arm, his curled fingers moving in merciless thrusts inside me, and I saw stars. 

“Are you playing a game? Is it fun for you to be a slut, or is it just a chore?” I couldn’t really comprehend his words, the woozy limiting of my air and the intense pressure to my insides already starting to overwhelm my senses. “You gonna cum already? Just like this?”

Apparently, I was. I went stiff down my spine, my legs shaking as he kept on with his motions, a sudden and wildly bright orgasm ripping through my nerves as he finally let up on my throat and I sucked in a huge breath. Finally I heard the wet sound of his hand slapping against me, felt him jerk it out of my cunt to dribble my own cum on my face. I shut my eyes against the warm droplets, feeling it inside my mouth and running down my cheeks. 

“_Fuck! _ Shit!” I gasped, shaken by my climax but also by whatever he was doing to me, the strange feeling I had that something was terribly wrong. I stared up at his face, and he was snarling. 

“Shut up!” he barked, shoving his fingers into my mouth and pushing them towards the back of my throat until I gagged and coughed on them. My eyes watered, and he started slapping my clit. My shriek was trapped around his digits, my legs jerking until they were yanked backwards and held by the Force splayed wide open. He switched to rubbing, my cum turning it into a wet noise, and my nerves sparkling and crackling in response. I clenched up, felt my body start to tighten and seek release. “I loved you. Fuck, I _ still _love you.” 

But at that, I looked at him through my teary eyes, surprised and confused and still being slowly overwhelmed again. Just as I neared the edge, his hand vanished. I tried to make an almost involuntary sound of frustration, but his fingers were still in my mouth. I heard him undoing his pants, then heard him stroking his cock with quick and violent pumps. 

“You’re perfect, you _ were _ perfect, we-- I’d take care of you-- I _ wanted _ to--” It was like he wasn’t sure what he was saying or what he wanted to say. He climbed back over me and wasted no time at all in slamming his cock into my sore opening until it hit my cervix like a battering ram, then leaned over to stare into my eyes with frenzied, confused, terrified, angry, hungry eyes. I stared back in shock. He pulled his fingers out of my mouth and held me by the chin as his lips crushed into mine, hips immediately taking the same merciless pace his fingers had earlier. I let out noises of pleasure and protest, lost in the paralyzing torrent of his emotions, unable to figure out how to respond. “Aeon-- fuck you-- how _ dare _ you-- I still-- still _ love _ you! FUCK!” 

I realized in that moment that he was crying, and that if Kylo was there, he was only just barely there. It shook me to my core, but I felt it. _ Matt _was the one fucking me like this, ravaging me with pain and terror and the fury that pressed him into blindness. My heart started racing, and suddenly the mounting pressure inside me wasn’t quite a good feeling at all anymore. I pulled myself away from my connection with him, which had gone from almost absent to all-consuming. Instead I felt the way the Force clamped around my limbs, and I started to unravel it. It was like sawing through duct tape with a dull razor blade. 

“Matt! You--”

“STOP IT!” he bellowed. “Kylo-- he’s the one-- he wants you-- he--”

“_YOU _ STOP IT!” I shouted back, and he pressed against my windpipe again. But I wasn’t afraid anymore as I picked at the restraints he had on me. My body shook under the sensations of grief and fear and and the sting of his thrusts, which were so unlike his usual attentions as to feel like he was another person entirely.

“_Kylo _ fucks you like this doesn't he? Don’t you want that?” He was furious, choking around sobs. “Or are you just-- do you just want-- he-- _ he _ loves you-- I guess that’s-- that’s enough--” I tried to say his name around his crushing hold on my throat, but a squawk was all that came out. He was stammering, sputtering, shaking his head. I was almost through the bonds, and just shy of physical panic as my heart pounded even harder. But I saw his eyes shift, suddenly. “Aeon, what’s--”

His face fell, his hold on me suddenly easing, hips stuttering and slowing. I stared, watched his face change, watching the tears he was apparently no longer holding back break over him. He seemed surprised, hand shaking as it came from my throat up to my cheek. Gasping for air, my eyes locked on his. I felt myself waiting for the right moment to twist away, to kick at him or send him flying away from me into a solid rock wall. But I wasn’t angry. I was just confused and terrified, and totally ready to be _ not _ in this fucking situation anymore. His hips stopped, his other hand flying over his mouth in what was quickly turning into shock. 

“Aeon-- what--” 

“Get _ off _ me!” I barked, and his eyes flew open as he pulled his cock out of me just that fast. But he was still hanging over me, hand still gripping my face, and I felt like I was slowly starting to suffocate. 

“I’m-- I don’t know what happened--”

“GET OFF!” I shouted, and he jerked away from me and stumbled back on his knees. I felt myself finally cut through the Force that was holding me down, and I closed my legs and curled up into a ball for a moment. I started counting my breaths, everything around me feeling distant and blurry. I couldn’t feel anything but an overwhelming desire to get out of that place.

“I’m so sorry, Aeon.” I heard a groan nearby. “I don’t know what just happened-- it-- it wasn’t me…” I realized in the back of my head that Kylo was speaking again, which felt for all the world like the only opportunity I had to get away. Scrambling up off the rock, I yanked my pants back on as I stumbled towards the path out of the little crevice in the cliff face. 

“Stay!” I yelled at him, not turning to look.

“Aeon! Wait! What happened?” I could hear the edge of terror in his voice, but I couldn’t come to save him from it. Not at that moment. If he touched me again, I was gonna react out of pure post-traumatic stress. 

“I’m going back to the hut,” I called behind me, the only thing I could do to let him know what was going on. 

“Please! _ Aeon!_” 

“_Just give me a minute!_” I finally felt myself start to cry, voice tearing on those words, and then I was gone. Out of the ravine, away from the cliff, up towards the village. Just before I reached the cobbled streets that would lead me to shelter, the bottom fell out of the sky. Drenched in a matter of minutes, I stumbled into the dark little hut and slammed the door behind me, careening towards the nest-bed and erupting into keening wails. I buried my face in the blankets to muffle the sounds I couldn’t seem to suppress any other way for the first time in a long time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had some anxiety about this chapter, but it's important to me to illustrate the way that sometimes our brains get very confused, disoriented, and reactive after bad experiences (which is what's going on with Matt, really, as he's clearly just dealt with some shit and is still in a bad place re:his anger and lack of processing it.) the other part i wanted to show is that sometimes folks with DID struggle with alters being switched out due to certain triggers and/or after or during distressing experiences. once again, every system is unique and their stories will not necessarily resemble Kylo, Matt, and Ben's system-- just like Aeon's experience of bipolar isn't necessarily the same as everyone else who has it. but the complications and their consequences are still very real and i wanted to honor that in this writing.
> 
> i also wanted to touch on the way that Aeon deals with the obviously trigger-y nature of what happens in this chapter due to their history, which i didn't delve into because i don't think i needed to, i'm sure y'all picked up on it. this encounter is confusing and unclear for a very intentional reason, aside from just honoring Matt's struggles and his system's struggles. i wanted to emphasize that not all of our experiences of this nature are cut-and-dried, one person does a bad thing and the other person is forever wounded by it. Aeon is aware that Kylo is struggling, but doesn't feel threatened at first. Matt is fighting the anger that's building up inside him as the event unfolds, but he has like zero experience actually doing that so he frankly doesn't do a good job. by then, Aeon is aware that they are in a situation that is causing a serious fight-or-flight reaction in them, and decides to get away. but, their healing has progressed to the point that they understand on some level that what just happened was a complicated mess of trauma and fear from all parties involved, and they're not full of anger as much as they're trying to de-escalate their body's response. i touch on this more from their point of view in the next chapter. 
> 
> this is a bit of a long note but i felt like it was important to issue a little artist's statement of sorts with this chapter because this whole fic has been equal parts romance/sex, which is mostly very feel-good and affirming on purpose, and pretty blunt honesty about the struggles of the characters. those struggles manifest in a lot of ways both magical and non, but this one touches on issues that are so widespread and so often discussed these days that i wanted to be real with y'all about why i wrote it. because the other themes of this fic, i'm sure you know, are making conscious choices and forgiveness, so. it's relevant.
> 
> your thoughts are welcome if you want to share them, and thanks for going with me on a bit of a personal journey here. it gets better, i promise xD


	74. Chapter 74

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things do not continue to suck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's smut in this one and it's real fluffy.

The rational part of my brain knew what had happened. Kylo had responded to me when he heard me call out to him, and I think he was very dissociated when he said he wanted to ‘come back.’ Probably our faint connection had been what he’d grasped for, so he kissed me. But I was pretty sure the reason he was dissociated was because Matt was active, or pushing very hard, and something had happened that had weakened both or all three of them. Unexpectedly drawn out through Kylo’s arousal, Matt had pushed and spilled his anger out until he was the one piloting, raw and furious and unreasonable in the wake of-- something. I felt certain that something had happened to him in that place where the Force was so powerful. But his exhaustion and confusion, or maybe his anger beginning to fade, had forced Kylo back out. Kylo, who was also exhausted and confused  _ and _ terribly shocked and afraid as to how I had ended up beneath him like that, full of him, and yelling for him to get off me. 

I felt a pang of guilt that only pushed another series of sobs out of me, knowing that Kylo was probably horrified and hurting and so lost right now, but at the same time I knew I couldn’t have helped him. Couldn’t have done anything except run far as fuck away. I was kinda impressed that I’d managed to tell him where I was going, and tell him to leave me alone for a minute; normally I would’ve just bolted like a deer into the woods. But the vision of his face, crying so much more easily than Matt had been able to, made me sad and scared, now. All the emotions I’d disconnected from had come hurtling back into my body, so I just laid there and wept until I was too tired to weep anymore. 

The moons were shining bright through the sliver of one of the windows in the hut, the sudden storm having blown over and blown away very quickly, when I heard the quietest little knock on the door. I was curled up on the nest, still damp, exhausted and wide awake. The door then gave its gentle creak of opening, and my eyes swam up to stare at it. 

I knew it was Kylo, also soaked through from the rain, face swollen and puffy and miserable. Our connection was still there, not as faint as it had been before but not as strong as it usually was, and that put me at ease in a weird way. My body was still keyed up, still wrapped in bad memories and waiting to see if they were repeating themselves. But I felt  _ less _ like I might explode, not more so, and I knew that was important.

He was silent as he entered the hut, and shut the door as quietly as he could. He didn't approach me at first, only sat down on one of the stone seats by the dead fire pit and put his hands in his lap, staring down at them. I was still, breathing shallow, eyes locked on him. He looked back at me finally.

“Are you alright?” he asked quietly, hoarse.

“No,” I whispered. 

“Can I help you?” 

“I… don’t know.” 

“I’m sorry, Aeon.”

“I know.” I tried to be reassuring.

“Should I go?” he asked, voice very, very small. 

“No.” For all that, I didn’t want him to go away again.  _ I wish I knew what to ask him to do, but I have no idea. _

“Should I build a fire?” 

“It’s not cold.” The air left after the storm had passed was balmy, a little humid. I wasn’t even clammy lying there in my damp clothes. 

“Our clothes need to dry.” He wasn’t arguing, just making a point. 

“It’s okay.” 

“Do you need food? Water?”  _ He’s trying so hard. _ I felt my heart ache. 

“M-maybe,” I murmured. “Water.” He rose and went to our supplies, pulling a canteen out of the pile and slowly walking over as he took its cap off. 

“Here,” he said, sitting at the edge of the nest and holding it out to me. Shaky and weak, I pushed myself upright enough to reach out and take the canteen from him, pressing it to my lips. I tilted my head back, and tepid water slid into my mouth and down my throat. That instantly made me feel a little better.

“Do you want to eat? I have some dehydrated polystarch that should be easy on your stomach,” Kylo suggested gently. I nodded, and he went back to our stuff to pull out a package of some kind of powder. He poured it into a little dish and then added some water from the other canteen, and I heard it sizzle and puff up into a weird ball of dough.  _ Oh, this is that shit Rey was eating on Jakku. Yum. _ But I was grateful when Kylo brought it over to me. He sat down again and tore off a hunk of the bready stuff, holding it over to me. His hair, which had started to dry out, was tousled and messy and unusually voluminous. In the moonlight, it made him look even more enormous and pale than he already was, threw his beautiful and striking features into sharp relief by framing them with black. 

I took the polystarch with my shaking hand and brought it to my mouth. It didn’t really taste like much, but it wasn’t offensive. The texture was kinda spongy and almost pleasant. I chewed it and swallowed, and found that my body was working much like it was supposed to. Taking another sip of water, I watched Kylo tear himself off a piece of the doughball. He ate it in short order, and then offered me another piece. In this way, we finished the loaf in silence. I offered the canteen back to him, and he finished it off in a long draught. Then he replaced the cap, and put it on the floor by the nest. When he looked back at me, he seemed less acutely distressed. His face was sad, tender, and focused only on me. Nothing remained of the chaos I felt before, only a deep longing. I swallowed, my throat still feeling sore from crying even as a lump rose in it.

“Matt did this for me once,” I whispered, a warm tear falling down my cheek. “When I was depressed that one time. He…” But I was crying again, and I held the back of my hand under my nose to wipe the tears that were running out of it off my lip, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. I sniffled and pulled my hand away. “He hurt me.” 

“How did he hurt you?” Kylo asked, eyes riveted on me still, voice even gentler and calmer.

“He was rough. Rougher than you’ve ever been.”

“Did he leave any marks on you?” 

“Maybe where he bit my neck.” My hand went up automatically to the spot where he’d done so, unable to feel anything until I touched it. Then, pain radiated out from it, and I hissed. 

“Can I look at it, please?” Kylo asked, brow knit. Nodding, I turned my head around so that the moonlight might help him see. I moved my hand and tried to watch him from the corner of my eye as he leaned over and looked. 

“Maker,” he sighed. “It’s a bruise. A big, dark one.” His hand came up to touch the skin around it, and I flinched. He drew his fingers back. “I’m sorry. I should’ve asked to touch you.”  _ Who knew Kylo would turn into the king of consent? _

“Y-you can touch me now,” I whispered. He resumed putting his fingers lightly on my neck around the bruise. 

“It doesn’t hurt where I’m touching, does it?”

“No.” 

“Okay. Just a bruise, then.” He stroked further up my neck all the way behind my ear. “That spot might’ve been a bad one, so I wanted to check. I’m so sorry, little one. I feel responsible.” I shut my eyes as he gently stroked my hair, which was getting kinda fluffy after my buzz cut had started growing out and I hadn’t had time to keep it short when all the shenanigans got really relentless. His touch sent gentle, soothing tingles across the back of my head and neck. I felt my body starting to slowly, slowly release some of its tension. 

“It’s not really your fault,” I assured him quietly. “I mean, I appreciate what you’re saying. I know it’s not like you can blame everything on your alters. But Matt was acting out, and I dunno why.”

“Neither do I,” he sighed. “Something happened to him down in that cave, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Let’s hope it turns out to be helpful in the long run.” I turned my face back towards him, saw his gentle eyes checking me in the moonlight for any other visible damage. 

“Do you want to put on something dry?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Just a minute.” He rose and rummaged around to pull out clothes for myself and him, soft things that would be comforting and easy to wear. He brought them over, laid them down by the bed, and politely turned away. I looked up at him, something about his protection of my modesty making me sad. 

“Kylo,” I said, and he turned his head to look back at me so fast, like he’d been hoping I’d say something. “Please.” I held out my hand, and tentatively he took it in his and towed me to standing. I stood close to him, taking in the way he smelled after being soaked in the clean Ahch-To rain. The moonlight fell on us, and I was continually struck by his beauty. I wanted to dissolve the wall between us, wanted to feel him as close as I always did. “Help me.” 

Without a word, he turned himself fully towards me and put his hands on my waist. I looked up at his face while he gingerly took the bottom hem of my shirt and peeled it up and over my head, raising and lowering my arms to assist. He moved slowly, touching my skin as he went along, trailing back to my waistband and taking a knee as he pulled my pants away from the skin of my thighs and calves. I stepped out of them, and he put the wet garments on the floor. His eyes ran like black water from my feet up to my face. 

“You are so beautiful,” he said, oh so quietly. “I’m sorry I ever hurt you.” 

“Hey.” I put my hand on his hair, which was so voluminous in its air-dried disarray that it felt luxurious and tangled at the same time. A lock of it fell in an easy wave over his face, and I pushed it back. “It’s alright. Don’t carry Matt’s burden. He and I will deal with that ourselves.” His eyes glimmered in the soft light, and he leaned his forehead onto my thigh with a sigh. I continued to stroke his hair for a moment. “I can help you now, if you want.” 

Now he looked back up at me, and raised his hands above his head silently. I bent down to tug his damp black shirt off, adding it to the pile, and took his face in my hands. He watched from the most subdued place, both stoic and tender somehow. I said nothing, unsure of myself in that moment, but full of the desire to reconnect fully with him. 

“Aeon, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” he said in a near-whisper.

“Stand up,” I replied, and he rose. I undid his pants, and tugged them down until they fell to the floor. He stepped out of them, nudging them towards the pile with a foot. Then I looked up, his expansive chest and shoulders before me, and reached up gently to press my hands against him. His skin was warm, and I felt him get goosebumps at my touch. “I’m… I’m reminding my body to trust you,” I said quietly. He made no reply, only watched me run my hands over his front deltoid muscles, his pecs, down the middle of his sternum to his upper abs. It was the same body I’d become so familiar with, and I remembered all the times I’d touched it in awe, in excitement, in joy, in ecstacy. My hands found his biceps, strong and hard and protective. He bent his arms and caught my elbows delicately, huge hands wrapped loosely around them. 

“You’ve become so strong, little one,” he said, looking at the muscles of my shoulders and arms much the same way I looked at his. Like he knew what was buried under them, the strength that was really there before the muscles and the tension and the relentlessness of our bodies really started to match that of our inner selves. He let his hands drop, but I stepped closer to him, feeling my heart beat faster. 

“You can touch me.” His eyes met mine, and his hands settled around my waist with much less than their usual urgency. His thumbs stroked my solar plexus, fingers ran along my back. Tracing my shoulder blades, he then ran his hands up and down my spine for a moment. I sighed into his chest. He rubbed my shoulders, then scratched my scalp softly with one hand while the other splayed across my upper back. 

“Your hair looks miraculous right now,” he said softly, a little ghost of a grin on his face. I blushed and smiled. “It’s gotten longer.”

“You should see yours,” I replied. “You have a mane. It’s so big.” He laughed, and his dimples made my heart flutter.

“I should cut mine. It’s a mess.”

“It’s beautiful. I like it.”

“You’re sweet.” 

“You always say that.”

“You always are.” That special smile was on his face. Slowly, my fears were melting away. I could even begin to feel the flow of the Force between us like it used to be, but more of a lazy creek than a thundering river. Within it I could distantly, ever so faintly detect some strange current of remorse. I thought maybe it was Matt, sharing a thread of similar emotion to one that Kylo was feeling albeit less acutely now. For a split second, I almost got nervous again. But then I remembered Matt’s blushing smile, his puzzled expression, his look of adoration.  _ Those things are still there in him, too. _ Until we’d resolved the schism, I wasn’t going to pass judgement on him. _ He and I will work that out ourselves. _

“Are you alright, my little love?” Kylo asked in a low, soft voice. My heart skipped a beat when he called me that, and I was pulled from my ruminations. I caught his eyes, which had become tender pools of blackness in the moonlight.

“I’m better,” I told him, sincere. “Thank you. For giving me that space to come back.”

“It brought me back, too.” He stroked my hair again. “I wanted to do right by you.” 

“You look so lovely in this light.” I couldn’t stop thinking it, so I just said it. 

“You’re radiant in it,” he cooed in response. “What a pair we make.” I smiled. 

“Will you lie down with me?” I asked.

“Do you want to put on your dry things?”

“Not really.” I pulled away, taking his hand, tugging him towards the nest. But I stopped when my foot hit the damp place I’d been laying before, and I sighed. “I fucked up, though, I got this part all wet.” 

“Here.” He pulled the blanket around, the dry part now on my side.

“Don’t sleep on the wet blanket!”

“I don’t care if it’s wet, Aeon. All I want is for you to be comfortable.”

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said with a smile that melted my resolve. “As long as you’re in my arms, I’ll be comfortable.” 

“Oh, Kylo,” I sighed, mesmerized. He drew me into him, and lifted me under my legs and arms gently to lie down and tuck me up against him. I felt small, but once again protected and cherished. “You’re so romantic. I never would’ve guessed that about you.”

“I wanted to be,” he confessed, turning us a little, resting my head on his arm, tangling our legs together. Even his favorite cuddling pose was romantic, us facing each other and him holding me like I might break, staring into one another’s eyes.  _ Man, if you’d have told me that when this thing started, I woulda laughed you out of the room. Now look at me. _ “But my job was to protect, so I didn’t get much practice.” 

“Not easy to be romantic and invulnerable at the same time,” I said with a wry grin. “Ask me how I know.” 

“You can be romantic, too, if you want.” His smirk was knowing. “But I know it’s not easy for you, either.” 

“I’m more the type that’ll write you a poem,” I muttered, blushing. “I don’t know how to be that romantic in person. I don’t even know what it means to ‘be’ romantic, I just know what feels that way.”

“What feels so romantic about me, then?” Kylo asked, curious.

“Um, everything you say to me?” I giggled. “At home we say it puts butterflies in your stomach. Makes you feel giddy. You make me feel that way when you call me ‘little love,’ or ‘little one,’ or call me radiant or beautiful. You made me feel that way when you told me to beg you in poetry. Last night, it was overwhelming, the things you said to me.” I could feel myself getting red just thinking about them. “When you tell me what you love about me, I feel like I’m high. Like I’m so happy I might float away.”

“I’m curious. When was the first time I made you feel that way?” His calm face couldn’t hide how much his heart was swelling, not from me.

“Well…” I realized I was having a hard time judging because the first stirrings towards Kylo had all been profound sexual tension.  _ When was the first time he was romantic to me? _ “Oh, you’re gonna hate this.”

“Try me.”

“When we woke up that morning, on Kaller? And you nuzzled my neck? And even though it was mildly horrifying, I wanted to know if you meant to do it  _ so  _ bad.” I was biting back my laughter, and his face went from slightly annoyed to reluctantly smiling. “Did you mean to?” Well I couldn’t help but ask! 

“I think I did it instinctively. I was still too sleepy to monitor my behavior,” he admitted almost sheepishly. Now I was grinning a mile wide.

“Hah! I knew it.”

“I doubt you did.”

“Okay, you’re right, I didn’t. But I still feel vindicated somehow.” He was half-grinning at me, good natured despite his embarrassment. “Then, after that, when you told me it was cute how much I liked looking out the meditation room window.” 

“From the moment I saw your face when we were above Tatooine the first time, I was fascinated by you,” he said quietly, stroking my cheek.  _ Oh. Oh wow. That was… that was the first day of my training, wasn’t it? _ “I wasn’t sure I should be, not in that way at least. I had no idea who you were or what you were capable of. But I’d never seen anyone look at a planet like that.”

“Wow,” I murmured, face bright red. Luckily in the moonlight my ridiculous blushing wasn’t super obvious.  _ Leave it to Kylo to carry a torch this entire fucking time. _

“Since we’re sharing,” he added, grin turning a little sly, “when were you first drawn to me, hm?” I looked up at him, unsure of how to answer once again.  _ Uh, before I ever met you while you were a fictional character in a movie? _ But I decided that didn’t count, since if he’d carried on like an asshole I would’ve gotten over it pretty damn fast. 

“It… might’ve been the first time you called me your apprentice,” I confessed. The smile that broke over his face was worth any embarrassment I might’ve felt.

“Really?”

“Yeah. When you told me I had to make five things float at once for my homework, or whatever, while you were off-planet. And I was like, are you shitting me? You just said, ‘I have faith in you, apprentice.’ And I was… it was the first time I thought maybe you might show me a single feeling other than anger.” I smiled. “And I was hopeful, after that, but I didn’t admit it to myself very much.” 

“I see,” he replied as though he were learning something and making a note but still with that smile on his face. “I suppose, to even things out, the first time you gave me, ah, what was it you called it? Butterflies? The first time that happened-- and I assume this is distinct from the first time I wanted to ravage you right where you stood--” he smirked-- “I think… I think it must’ve been that time I was holding you, when you were so cold, after Palpatine tried to find you. When you said maybe power wasn’t the only thing that could protect us, and you squeezed my hand. Then after that you squeezed it again, like you were trying to reassure me that you saw me as more than just the Supreme Leader.” I remembered that vividly, of course. I smiled in wonder.

“You nuzzled my neck then, too! And not just because Matt was pushing you to take care of me, I know that now.” 

“Before I carried you back to your bed,” he added, the memory moving through his eyes. “And you took my hand again, even though you were almost asleep.”

“You were so sweet to me that day.” We just grinned at each other like idiots for a moment. 

“I suppose it took both of us a while to accept our feelings,” he said finally.

“Yeah, accepting how much we wanted to bang was much easier.” I chuckled. 

“I wanted to take you right there on the mat the first time you and I were using the Force together,” he purred. 

“I kinda wanted you to, not gonna lie.” 

“You were always beautiful, and it didn’t take me long to like your bite, but that day…” His eyes were heavy, the energy between us sparkling. 

“I know. I felt it, too.” I was feeling it now, also. Kinda the last thing I thought I was gonna feel, after what had happened at the creepy seaweed sinkhole, but this had been what I’d wanted to return to, after all. The flow of trust and attraction and love between us. Hearing all the cute shit about how he’d gone full Space Darcy on me this entire time certainly helped. (To be fair, I was full Elizabeth Bennet, so I’m not talking shit.)

“Sweet thing,” he cooed, pressing our foreheads together. “It’s so late, and you’ve been through too much today. But you look otherworldly by the light of these moons.” 

“Being romantic doesn’t make me want you to fuck me less,” I replied in a husky voice.  _ If anything, it makes it way worse. _ His eyes flew open, pulling enough away from me to stare into mine. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. 

“Be gentle, then.” That seemed to make sense to him. His hand took my face and he ran his nose up and down against mine, hovered his lips close. My skin crackled with desire.

“Very well. But it’s only about your pleasure, tonight.” He trailed the tip of one finger down my neck, then shifted me on top of him with his heart-stopping strength. Running a finger over my lips as I stared up at his face from his chest, he looked through heavy-lidded eyes at me. “Bring your pretty cunt up here, little one. Let me worship it.” I clenched as a thrill ran through my body, my breathing getting heavier and my heart jumping a little. 

Silently I crawled up and over him, nestling his head between my legs. He took in a deep, luxurious inhale, his hands on top of my thighs and rubbing my quads gently. His black eyes found mine from below, piercing me with their profound focus. 

“Kylo,” I sighed as his mouth finally neared my clit, breathing hot onto it before his tongue came out to lap over it once, indulgent. I took fistfuls of his magnificent hair, staring down at his moonlit face. His pillowy lips came around my bud, suckling it ever so softly. If I had been worried about my body’s reaction before, I wasn’t now. Pleasure rippled through me in no hurry, blossoming from my cunt out all over my body. He lapped between my folds, massaged my opening with his tongue, and drew loops all around my clit. He kept sighing and moaning softly as though he were eating a rare dish, or drinking some crazy expensive wine. I breathed loudly and sighed with him, eyelids fluttering as I watched him. 

His tongue slipped inside me and I mewled softly as my thighs started to shake. My body was coiling up slowly, and warmth was flushing up under my skin. I let myself relax and sag into his face, rocked my hips on his tongue. 

“Ooooh, Kylo,” I murmured. “Your mouth...”

“Mmmm,” he hummed into me, and I shivered. He pulled his lips away. “Can I put my fingers inside you?”

“Yes,” I reassured him. “I don’t think it’s gonna hurt.” He nodded, then nuzzled his nose back into the soft skin between my thighs before his tongue began to dance over my clit again. I was getting slick all over his chin, so there was no trouble at all when he pushed a finger inside me and curled it up against my g-spot. Nor when he added another. 

“Fuck!” I was melting from within while he worked me from inside and out. He swirled another finger over my asshole. “ _ Yes, _ ” I whimpered, nodding down at him when his eyes flashed up at me. Then he was pushing fingers in and out of my ass too, piling on all the feelings he could. I felt a sparkling sensation around my nipples, an invisible pressure that rubbed and rolled them gently and sent even more shivers bouncing all around inside my body. The build had been so slow, so gentle, that when I found myself looking over the edge there was nothing left to keep me from toppling over it. I keened, back arching as he worked a shuddering flash of pleasure through me. “ _ Ohmigod! _ ” I whined, feeling my orgasm crest over me in waves. I came into his mouth, and he lapped at me hungrily while I burbled and moaned. Pushing in that way he knew so well how to do, he kept me in the thick of my climax for a lot longer than I would’ve been there otherwise. My legs shook on either side of his face and I gripped his hair tightly, hearing him groan into me when I did. When his hands finally slid out of me, I slumped back and sat on his chest. His knees were bent, so I lolled back against them like he was a lounge chair. 

“How do you feel, Aeon?” he asked, ardent. 

“Lovely,” I sighed. My legs were still parted, my cunt still right there in front of him, so when his hand came over the top of my thigh to stroke my swollen clit softly, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Oh!”

“I love it when you ride my face, little one,” he said, watching me intently as he continued to touch me. “Your legs are so powerful.”

“Oooh, shit.” I was very articulate, of course, as my body started to respond quickly. “Kylo, you don’t have to--”

“I want to,” he purred. I spread my legs wider to grant him more access, and he just let me sit there on his chest and writhe against his legs as he stroked and stroked and stroked me, pace slowly increasing. “I could watch this for hours, little one. I feel every muscle in your body when you move for me, every shiver in your soul when I touch you.”

“Y-you can-- cum too--”

“Don’t worry about me. Tell me what you want. How do you want to feel?” 

“Like I can l-lose myself,” I sighed. “I-- ah-- like-- like you’ll hold me-- when I’m-- when I can’t stand-- can’t be held--”

“You going to write me a poem while I fuck you, sweet thing?” he asked, almost chuckling. “I know you can barely speak, like this.”

“Fuuuck,” I moaned, my nerves starting to get brighter and brighter as his pressure increased. “Kylo, you-- you make me feel-- like-- like every sound-- I make-- ahh-- is--  _ fuck-- _ ”

“Precious? Perfect? Necessary?” He watched me with growing fierceness.

“I’m-- fuck!” I came before I could even warn him, could even see it coming. My skin felt like fireworks, and I shook against him. He sat up, then, and picked me up to set me in his lap while he held me against him to shiver and swoon. 

“I want you to feel safe with me, Aeon,” he said quietly into my ear. “I’ll hold you. I’ll help you. I don’t want to get that far away from you again.” I knew he didn’t mean physically. Our connection had been so dull, so distant, for most of the day. 

“I found you,” I whispered. “I always will.”

“I know.” He ran his nose against my ear. “You’re right.”

“This? This is giving me butterflies. Just… so you know.” I smiled faintly. He chuckled. 

“When you find words like that for me, it gives them to me, too.”

“I’ll find better words, then.” _ Have I ever even said anything half as nice to him as he’s said to me? Fuck. I’m so bad at this. _

“You don’t owe me anything, Aeon. Not even words.”

“I love you,” I told him pointedly, pulling my head away enough to look him in the eyes again.

“I love you back.” He stroked my cheek. “I could touch you more. Anything you want.”

“Hold me.” I wrapped my hand around his. “Sleep with me. You don’t owe me anything, either.” I was starting to feel worried that he was trying to pay some penance in orgasms, and that wasn’t what I wanted. His eyes glistened. 

“You are so whole, little one. So complete, even without me.”

“Do you think so?”  _ Somewhere my therapist is cheering for me, if what he just said is true. _

“You made me want to be whole again. I forgot I could be.”  _ Oh, well fuck. _

“You look pretty well assembled to me.” I smirked at him, deflecting from how much that statement meant to me. I LOVE being vulnerable!

“I’m getting there.” He was joking but serious, appreciative of my reassurance. “If you want to sleep, we can.”

“I want to be close to you, and rest. So yeah,” I murmured, touching his face. “You’re so handsome. So very beautiful.” He smiled again and leaned forward to kiss my forehead. He shifted, moved us around, nestled down into the bed. He wrapped us in a blanket and held me close.

“Thank you, Aeon,” he sighed against the back of my neck where he was curled around me, and I felt sleep looming ahead. 

“For what?” I asked him groggily.

“Being what you are.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this got FLUFFY T-T and i love it. i love it so much. i think it shows Kylo's progress so much, when you think back to his previous methods of responding to Aeon's troubles and his role in them. Matt's taking a minute to re-emerge, but i mean. i can't blame him... poor thing :( 
> 
> but he does re-emerge soon, don't fret. and thank you as always for your comments and kudos and readership!


	75. Chapter 75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which trusting your feelings isn't overrated at all.

I woke up still nestled in Kylo’s arms, as though neither of us had moved at any point while we slept, we were so exhausted. The sun was very much up, and I had no idea what time it was. Kylo’s breath was deep and even on my neck, and my hands were folded into both of his and heavy with sleep. It was blissful, that little period of quiet where the rise and fall of his chest was the only thing that moved, the dull sounds of Ach-To just barely filtering in from outside, and I was warm and safe. 

The worst thing about waking up like that is when you suddenly remember all the fucking horse shit that’s happening in your life. Then, the moment is a little bit ruined, even if you don’t instantly descend into misery or anything. I sighed, and simply receded deeper into the cavern Kylo’s body made around me. _ I’ll stay here. Fuck the world, today. I’m not about it.  _

I was almost asleep again when I felt him stir and nuzzle his nose against me in that sleepy way he did. Arching back against him, I brought one of his hands to my face to kiss it. 

“Kylo, I don’t wanna get up yet,” I murmured. “Or maybe ever.”

“Hmmmm.” He was barely lucid, voice extra low and rumbly with disuse. “Stay in bed with me today?”

“Yeah.” 

“Hmmm. Like the sound of that,” he said, pulling me tighter to him. His warm, huge body was shifting just a little all behind and around me; the sensation of his skin brushing against mine was like a drug pulling me away from the harsh realities I knew I was gonna have to face eventually. But not right now, right? One of his hands was running across the front of my body, slipping over my nipples and down over my belly to my hip. He pushed his thumb gently into the bend of that hip beneath the bone, and I groaned softly.

“I’m scared we, ah, should be doing something,” I breathed as he tugged my loosened hip, pulled my leg back, ran his fingers along the inner thigh of my other leg beneath it. 

“Like what?” His breath was hot in my ear, his sleepy movements sensual and heavy.

“No idea.” Brushing the tuft of hair between my legs, he kissed my temple softly. “Maybe talking to Rey? I kinda fucked up, yesterday. She got mad at me.”

“Today you should rest, little one,” he replied. “Perhaps I should, too.”

“If Luke shows up and gets mad--”

“Let him.” Now his fingers ran lightly over my clit, and I sucked in a breath. “He must know what happened yesterday.”

“M-maybe.” I could feel his cock pushing against my leg, very much awake. But our words were quiet, husky, clinging to the edge of sleep. I moaned as he started to stroke my nethers, to lean me back into him a little more and open up the space between my legs.

“Shhh.” My nerves started to sparkle at his touch, my morning body not resistant to the ripples of pleasure flowing through me. “Can I take you, Aeon?”

“Please,” I sighed, eyelids fluttering shut. I felt him shift, his hand moving to lift my leg while the broad head of his length nestled between my slick folds. I gasped when he slid inside me, a slow and smooth movement that sent warmth out all over me. He let my leg fall, pushed himself in deeper and growled against my head. His hand came back around me, arm over my waist and gripping me clumsily as he began to rut. I whimpered, felt his big hand on my belly holding me in place. Pressure was building from my core, faster than usual from the lack of tension. He was silent but for his pants and growls, his thrusts landing so deep that I was dizzy. 

“Shit--” Finally he swore on an exhale, his grip tightening, back arching as he drove his cock into me even faster and harder. I mewled, felt myself clench and start to shake.

“Kylo!” The slapping of his torso against my ass cheeks became a little wet, the sound of my orgasm ballooning up and bursting from inside me as I gasped for breath. I contracted around him, pleasure gently flooding every part of me, and felt his thrusts get erratic. He growled more harshly than he had yet. When his seed spilled out hot inside me, he held himself still and pressed our bodies together. We were breathing in unison, still less than fully awake in the afterglow. He curled around me again, cock slipping out of me, body warm and flushed. I turned my head around, nosing his face until he moved it and kissed my mouth with his soft lips. 

“Oh, Aeon,” he sighed when he pulled away. “I know that wasn’t exciting--”

“Hush,” I scolded him softly. “It was lovely. You’re lovely.”

“Mm.” He nuzzled me with his forehead.  _ Sometimes I’m still surprised at how he gets a little insecure about the sex not being ridiculous every time, even though it’s always good. _ I was creeping back towards sleepiness, but I didn’t really want to sleep. I shifted my body, turned around to face him. His heavy-lidded eyes watched me blearily.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, pressing up close to him in his favorite cuddling pose. His hands came onto my back. 

“Loved.” That word choice struck me, and I blinked and smiled a tiny, exhausted smile.

“Good.” 

“And you, sweet thing?”

“Tired. Comfortable. Grateful you’re here.” I kissed the tip of his nose. “I… there’s things to deal with, but I don’t know how to deal with them. It’s not very restful.” 

“I know what you mean,” he sighed. “I… don’t know what Rey is up to, but I think maybe you should stay with me, today. Even if I go back there.” He meant the dark place we’d both been yesterday. I swallowed.

“Can we talk to Luke? See if he knows what’s going on?”

“We can try. I know he wants me to do something too, while I’m here. I just don’t know what.” I nodded, and reached up to stroke his cheek. 

“I’m sure he wants me to talk to Matt, at some point.” I brought it up, so Kylo didn’t have to. His eyes were on mine, watchful. 

“I hope it goes well,” he said, quiet and clearly uncomfortable with the fact that for once he could do nothing to protect me-- not from his own alter. He was handling it pretty well, though.

“I kinda get why Rey wanted to exile herself here, now,” I murmured, sighing. He pressed his forehead into mine, and we laid there in silence for a moment.  Then, there was a knock at the door of the hut. Raising an eyebrow, I glanced up towards it.

“It’s Rey,” came a voice from outside. “Can I talk to you?” 

“Just a minute!” I called back, and I planted a kiss on Kylo’s lips before I hauled myself up reluctantly and threw the dry clothes he’d picked out the night before at him. He chuckled, pulling on his pants and walking over to the door. I tucked myself out of sight to do the same as he cracked it open, looking out at Rey. In typical Kylo fashion, he said nothing. 

“Um. Where’s Aeon?” she asked, and I pulled my shirt over my head before I walked over. Kylo swung the door open farther, and started pulling on his shirt as well. 

“What’s up?” I asked. 

“Ah, I wanted to talk to you. About yesterday.” She glanced between me and Kylo.

“He knows,” I told her flatly. “It’s not a secret.” Now her face fell.

“Oh.” 

“You okay?” I asked her, letting my curiosity and concern override my surge of grumpiness. 

“Not really, no,” she replied. “I have a bad feeling about this.” 

“About what?” Kylo asked.

“This. All of it. Everything. Whatever it is that’s about to happen.” She looked between us again. “I can’t shake the feeling that we’re going to lose.” 

“If you don’t fight, you can’t possibly win.” I raised an eyebrow at her. 

“I mean either way. Regardless.” 

“You mean you’re afraid you’ll fail?” Kylo interjected, giving her a stern but not unkind look. “I think we all know that feeling, Rey.” I looked at him, knowing full well that his fears revolved around failure. And honestly, mine kinda did too. 

“Yeah. I guess that’s what it is.” She shook her head a little. “I don’t know what to do. I want to trust Luke, I want to trust both of you and my friends. But I can’t shake that feeling, and the Force isn’t clear.” 

“If you don’t trust yourself, you won’t find it easy to trust anybody else,” I pointed out. “Maybe that’s what you’re running into.” Rey eyed me, a little defensive but mostly she seemed to be considering what I’d said. Finally she took a deep breath. 

“There’s fresh channelfish, if you want some,” she said simply, and then turned around back towards her hut. I looked at Kylo, and he looked down at me and gave a little shrug. 

“Might as well try it,” he said, holding out his hand. Every time he did that, my heart melted a little. I took it, and we walked out into the sun. 

\-----

Kylo was sitting on a grassy knoll later that afternoon in a meditation posture, Rey down on some flat of rock drilling with her quarterstaff, while I was laying down on my back with my eyes shut, most of a daisy chain in my hands (made out of some little blue flower that grew on the island), trying to get some kinda calm to stick somewhere in my bones. I wanted to see Matt, wanted to talk to him despite how shaken I felt by the events of the night before, but damn if I didn’t feel like I was gonna dry up and blow away. I needed to be calm and present, I felt sure, but was struggling to hang onto that feeling already. 

When I cracked an eye, I saw the figure of Luke lying beside me on the grass. He seemed dour, exhausted. 

“You okay, kid?” he asked me quietly. 

“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m hanging in there.”

“I’m sorry. About what happened. Matt made his way to that place and… well. I’ll let him tell you about it.” The old Jedi sighed and shook his head. “He’s going to need a lot of coaxing to come out again. Kylo and Ben might have to help him-- and maybe you.” 

I knew I was supposed to get stiff and want to be far as fuck away from Matt, and maybe a part of me did. But mostly I wanted to get clear on whatever had happened, I wanted to hear his apology, I wanted to know what the entire fuck was going on in his head. I sighed. 

“Yeah. Okay. I’m in. What should I do?” 

“I don’t know. But try to do something, set up an environment that will make him feel safe. Talk to Kylo. I’ll be there, whatever happens.” He looked at me again, giving me a nod of reassurance. What he was really saying was  _ I won’t let anything like that happen to you again. _ I nodded back. 

“Thank you, Luke. I don’t know what Matt needs, but I have a few ideas.” A faint smile touched his expression. 

“You got it, kid.” And he was gone again, like a glimmer in the sunlight. I craned my head and looked up at Kylo where he sat with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. 

“Hey,” I called quietly. 

“Hey,” he replied without moving. “Were you talking to Luke?”

“You felt it?”

“Yeah.” Now his head turned around to look at me. “What did he say?”

“We gotta help Matt. Whatever went down for him last night, it was all bad. Luke says he needs to come out, but he’s not going to unless we help him. Make him feel safe.” His dark eyes regarded me, and then flitted off into the distance somewhere to look into his own thoughts. 

“Do you think we should dye his hair? There’s some of his rinse in our stuff. I always keep it around for him, these days.” He smiled a little.  _ Wow, that’s so cute. _

“Yeah,” I replied, smiling back. I looked down at the flowers I’d woven together, then back at him. “Maybe that. Maybe take him somewhere that’s not full of Force energy, somewhere natural? Does he like the ocean?”

“He loves tide pools. I remember that from when we were kids. Ben does too,” he told me. “I personally think they’re alright.” That made me laugh. 

“Okay then, why don’t we take care of y’alls body and see if we can’t find someplace quiet to bring him out?” Kylo answered by rising to his feet, and offering his hand to tug me up to standing. I looked down and saw Rey glance up at us, but return just as quickly to her drills. We made for our little hut.

Sure as shit, there was blonde rinse (and the reversal rinse, of course) in Kylo’s bags. I did my best to ask the fish people if they had any kind of clothes that were gentle and drapey for Matt to wear, which was so comical I wish I could describe the things I was doing. Basically I tried to play charades, and apparently I got my shit across pretty well eventually because they brought me some of their nice linen cloth and even a little bonnet. Kylo was leaning against the frame of the door to our hut, watching me accept the pile of clothes and chuckling. 

“I don’t think Matt’s gonna go for the hat,” he commented as I returned to our hut.

“I know, but after all that, it wasn’t like I was gonna say no.” I watched him pull his satchel over his shoulder. “You have his lightsaber, right?”

“No,” he said, brow knitting. “Do you think we should bring it?”

“Yeah.” It seemed intuitive to me to bring it, of course, so I passed him to rummage around in my bags and pull the sack that had all three of our saber hilts in it.

“You think he’ll need it?” Kylo seemed a little anxious. I put my hand on his arm.

“It’ll be okay,” I reassured him gently. 

“Alright,” he nodded. “If you say so, little one. I believe you.” I smiled, and we took off to find some nice desolate little tidepool tucked into the rocks somewhere. I won’t lie, I was nervous. But more than that, I wanted to understand. I wanted to see my beautiful Mattau again.

By the time I’d dyed Kylo’s hair and fashioned a rather lovely dress out of the linen for him to wear, the sun was creeping towards the horizon. But the spot we’d found was perfect. One side was a sheer cliff wall, the other was more rocky and the sea had carved a little hollow out of the island that was full of water and connected to it by a tiny channel. Kylo was looking down at his dress, which left his gorgeous arms bare but caught on the ground below his bare feet, curious.

“This is a lot more comfortable than I expected,” he said. I giggled.

“What, you thought dresses weren’t cool?” 

“I admit, I never actually thought about them. At all.” 

“Well, Matt loves them. I think they make him feel more at home in the body.” Kylo regarded me strangely, like it was weird that I would know that about Matt and he wouldn’t. But he didn’t seem upset. “Certainly more than your Supreme Leader duds ever did.”

“Hm.” He moved the linen around his legs, watching it flow. “Alright. What are we supposed to do now?” 

“I don’t know,” I told him with a sigh. “Try to talk to him, maybe?” 

“You know it doesn’t work like that.” He gave me a frown. 

“Well, he and I are connected the same way you and I are. Why don’t we try using that?” It was the only idea I had, and even though it was the Force and that was Matt’s third least favorite thing right now (After Luke and me, of course) it seemed like it might actually work. 

“Alright.” Clearly he had no better ideas, either. I walked up to where he stood facing the pool, and he turned to look at me. I felt the Force flowing between us, unhurried and vital. As if on instinct, we both closed our eyes. 

Immediately, I was in the strange place inside Kylo that felt like a shattered mirror, where I’d been before when I’d healed his wound. I glanced between the shards as they glittered and hung around me, strange ephemeral shards of him. But Kylo’s shards were still knitting together, more assembled than they’d been the last time I was here. I turned around, and behind me I saw Ben. He was older again, even taller than before but still gangly, with short shaggy hair and big ears. He smiled. 

“Hey Aeon! You’re in here,” he said, sounding surprised. “How’d you do that?”

“Oh, the Force showed me, or something like that.” I grinned at him. “How you doin’, Ben?” 

“I’m… okay. There’s been so much going on lately.” He seemed a little tired, and a little unhappy. “This island is kinda crazy.”

“Yeah, it is. You felt the Force in that one creepy spot yet?” 

“Yeah I did. It was…” He sucked his teeth. “Kind of a lot.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” 

“Actually… I kinda do,” he admitted, looking at me a little sheepishly. “Is that okay?”

“Oh,” I blinked. “Sure, dude, fire away.” I guess I was surprised that he trusted me?

“Well, I was in here with Kylo. Kylo was kinda far away, though, like out of it. Matt was in the body. I felt… well I thought a lot about my parents. I felt really sad that I didn’t get to see them more.” He looked at his (comically large) feet. “I felt like I never got a chance to be a kid, even though I know I’ve been growing up slow.”

“Hoo boy,” I said. “I know the feeling. ‘Cept I was growing normal. I’m sorry, Ben.” 

“It’s okay,” he assured me. “I just felt it a lot. I felt like I was being offered the chance to start over, like I could get transported out of this body and into my own body and be a kid again. Grow up all over again with parents who spent more time with me. Without Snoke always in my head scaring me to death.” He swallowed. “But I didn’t feel Kylo or Matt, when that happened.”

“Shit,” I muttered, looking at him with a whole new wave of protectiveness and anxiety. “What… I mean, what did you choose?”

“Well, I’m still here,” he replied. I nodded. _So he chose that. _

“You think you woulda actually gotten that dream you were promised?” I asked. 

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “I thought it was possible at the time. Right now I guess maybe it could’ve just been a lie from the dark side, or something.” 

“You really believe it was the dark side?” I asked him with a raised eyebrow. “When I was down there, I thought for sure it was Palpatine trying to fuck with me. Not the Force itself.” His eyebrows came together.

“That… sounds more realistic, doesn’t it?” He looked at me for affirmation. “I mean, does the Force care what I do?” 

“I’m not convinced it does,” I told him conspiratorially. “Your uncle, and maybe everyone else out there who uses it, might disagree with me though. But I think it’s just there, and if we feel some willpower, it belongs to someone using the Force. Or, to ourselves.” Ben seemed like this was really resonating with him, nodding at me. 

“Yeah. I mean, I dunno if it was Palpatine. I dunno who it was. But, I know I didn’t wanna be away from Kylo and Matt.” 

“Makes sense. If that’s how you feel, it was the right choice.” 

“Thanks.” He smiled. “You’re here to talk to Matt, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah,” I admitted, nodding. “But I’m glad I got to talk to you, too.” He beamed. 

“I’m glad too!” _Ohmigod he’s such a little bean. Er, a big bean._ “Matt, uh… I don’t think Matt wants to talk, though.”

“I know he doesn’t,” I said. “But we need him.”

“He’s really upset, Aeon. I’m… kinda scared he’ll get angry like he did again. He hadn’t done that in so long and now he’s done it so much.” Big, brown eyes were now frightened as he looked at me. “When he gets like that, I get afraid. He’s the calm one, usually.”

“People can be more than one thing, Ben. Matt needs to learn to let himself be angry without it consuming him. He deserves to have his own feelings, and not to be ashamed of them.” I looked seriously at the boy. “All of us do.” 

I felt something shift in the strange space I was in, as though light were glinting off different mirror shards than it had been before. Ben raised a hand, which I saw was a little shaky, and offered it to me. I wasn’t sure what he was about to do, but I reached out to him. 

The instant our fingers touched, I felt myself jerk strangely. My eyes flew wide open, and the balmy air of Ahch-To filled my lungs. My hand was touching Kylo’s-- but it wasn’t Kylo. 

Brown eyes looked down at me, large and full of conflict. But neither of us moved, and the Force was like a circle connecting us. For a long moment, we were silent; but then I knew it was my turn to go first.

“Hey, Matt.” 

At first he didn’t reply, only looked at me as I watched the cacophony of emotions moving through his eyes. 

“I…” His voice caught, as though it was hoarse from disuse-- or screaming. He seemed stuck. 

“I missed you,” I said quietly. I felt the tension in him suddenly sag. He blinked rapidly, as though fighting tears. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. “Do you like your dress?” 

He looked down suddenly, his hand drawing away from me and over the fabric he was wearing. I had draped it in an X shape over his shoulders, tied it around his waist, and attached it to another piece that made a skirt. The daisy chain I’d made earlier out of the blue flowers was on his head, crowning his blonde hair. He looked really beautiful, the linen a perfect backdrop for his ruddy complexion. 

When he looked back up at me, there were tears in his eyes. I was watching his anger fall away, regret and fear and shame rising in its place. His bottom lip trembled. 

“Aeon,” he choked out, his voice small. I felt my heartache viscerally, felt my own fear and grief and guilt. Our feelings were so similar, his and mine. 

“I never wanted you and Kylo and Ben to be the same person,” I told him in a soft voice. “Will you believe me?” His tears began to fall, his mouth working as though he couldn’t figure out what to say, but then he stood a little more upright. 

“You came to me in the cave,” he began. “You… you said you loved me. Then you put your saber through me. You said you were setting me free.” 

“The cave here?” I asked, confused and a little spooked. 

“Where am I?” 

“Ahch-To. The island of the first Jedi temple. Which I believe your uncle set on fire, or tried to.” I was nervous to mention him, but it seemed like I had to. 

“Luke?” The anger was creeping back into his expression. “Set… set the Jedi temple on fire?” 

“With a little help, yeah.” I decided not to get into how technically Yoda did it because Luke was too anxious to follow through on his own instinct. That wasn’t the point, anyway. 

“Why would he do that?” Matt asked, confused. 

“Because he figured out that the legacy of the Jedi was failure. Maybe he wasn’t interested in spreading their teachings anymore.” He was in clear disbelief, but I could feel that he wanted it to be true. “You should ask him yourself.” 

“I--” But Luke was already there, standing beside him. I saw his eyes widen and then narrow, felt his heartbeat quicken. 

“It’s time for the Jedi to end. And it’s high time I said I’m sorry, Mattau.” The old man was clearly full of remorse, finally expressing it.  


“Why would you bring Aeon here if it wasn’t to push us together?” the blonde retorted, his fists clenching. 

“To help you out. To make you feel less alone. To give you a perspective I never could.” 

“Why would you make me fall in love with them?” His voice was smaller now, pained. 

“I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have. That’s all you, kid.” Luke was giving a humorless smile, trying to be sagely without being overbearing. “I can’t make you do anything. I never could.” 

“You tried!” Without warning, Matt’s saber came flying through the air from my bag into his hand, and he made to plunge it through Luke’s heart. But, being as Luke was dead, this had no effect on the ghost. I felt myself lunge forward instinctively to try to stop whatever was happening, only to watch Matt topple into the tidepool. His saber cut off, sinking beneath the sea water, and he floundered in the water, which was deep enough that he was soaked up to his shoulders when he fell in.

“Matt!” I called, immediately plunging into the water behind him. When I was standing it was up to my thighs. He was still, shocked-- by everything, I imagine. Somewhere in my brain, a voice was protesting that maybe I shouldn’t rush in after him, since he had worked very hard to kill me once and had hurt me the night before. But I approached, and he didn’t even try to stand. He just sat there in the water, looking down at his reflection as the ripples slowly faded. I stood there watching him. He saw his hair, and the flowers in it, and he seemed overwhelmed. His shoulders shook, and he choked back a sob. Slowly, he drifted and moved towards my legs, his huge hands wrapping around my calves under the water, his forehead pressing into my thigh. 

“Aeon, I’m sorry,” he said, quietly and tearfully. “I’m so sorry. I’m_ so_ so sorry.” 

“Hey,” I cooed, feeling myself start to tear up now. I reached down and put my hand in his hair, rubbing his head gently. 

“I’m s-sorry for what I did. F-for losing my temper.” He was crying freely now, sniffling, choking out his words. The fabric of his dress floated around his figure under the water. “I’m s-sorry-- for what happened in the cave, last night. It-- I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. But it s-shouldn’t have-- and-- and it was my fault.” 

“Matt,” I whispered softly, leaning down to put my hand under his chin. I lifted his face up towards me, his puffy red eyes meeting mine. “I forgive you.” 

His face crumpled, and he wrapped himself around my legs and laid his cheek against my leg as he sobbed. Finally, finally, _finally_ he was letting himself feel everything-- and it all felt bad, but it was moving through him like a river through a broken dam. I felt the huge tide of it as it circled through us. My hands were still on his head, and I let him just cry like that. I don’t know how long it was, I didn’t care. When he looked back up at me and sniffled, I stroked his cheek. Dipping one hand into the water, I let some of it run over his forehead and cheeks, wiped it under his nose. It was a strange baptism, that moment; he shut his eyes and let me touch him gingerly, reverently. 

“You’re the one who told me to be what I am. You oughta take your own advice,” I told him softly. His eyes opened and he tried to smile back. 

“I’m not a murderer,” he said. “Even though I killed people at the Academy. I regret it every day.” 

“I know.” 

“I’m caregiver. I’m an engineer. I’m a person who fixes things.” 

“You’re a sweetheart,” I added with a soft smile.

“I… I think I might be a girl,” he said very quietly. I blinked. 

“Oh yeah?”  _ !!!!!!!!! _

“I’m not sure, but…” He looked at me very intently. “I definitely don’t feel like a boy.” I couldn’t stop beaming, and I let myself crash to my knees in the water so I could put my arms around him and hug him. He leaned his head against my neck, gripping me like he was afraid I would disappear.

“That’s okay! You can be a girl, and you don’t have to be either, I mean, look at me!” 

“You showed me that. You’re the one who made me think maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe I felt this way for a reason.”  _ OHMIGOD!! _

“You want me to call you 'she' instead of 'he'? Or 'they', like me?” I asked earnestly.

“Not yet,” he replied, uncertain. “I wanna think about it for a while.” 

“Okay.” I nodded vigorously. “You can take your time. Just let me know anything you want me to do, or say. Anything. Whatever you want.” I saw him finally start to smile, fresh tears in his eyes. 

“I wanted to talk to you about it so much,” he admitted. “But there was so much going on.” 

“I know,” I said. “It’s been so overwhelming. It’s only gonna get worse if we get to Exegol-- we’re trying to help Rey feel like she can go with us, and help us. She’s scared. I don’t blame her, I’m not exactly skipping there myself.” 

“I’m… I dunno how helpful I can be, Aeon, but I’ll do whatever I can.” He nodded, his hand finally rising from the water to touch my face. “I’m with you. I’ll never leave again, unless you ask me to.” 

“Please don’t go,” I almost laughed. “I love you so much.” Now he really smiled, though still weepy, and he leaned forward slowly to place a gentle kiss on my lips. I felt electricity crackle through me, felt my heart pounding with joy and relief. I hadn’t remembered the touch of his hands on my face in a long time, hadn’t recalled the vital current of the Force borne up on waves of his intense reverence, his overwhelming desire to bring me the full measure of his love. Every time it had come up, I’d pushed the memory away because it hurt. Now here it was, like it was supposed to be. I was so relieved I genuinely struggle to describe it.

“I know,” he sighed when he pulled away. “I love you back.” My hands had drifted back down to my sides in the water, and now they trailed along the bed of the tidepool-- and landed on the hilt of his saber. I pulled it out of the water, and pressed it against his chest. 

“Why is it cracked? Your crystal?” He blinked, as though he didn’t know what I meant. 

“It is?” 

“Haven’t you used this since the Academy?” 

“Not before just now,” he replied, a flash of guilt on his face. “Let me look at it.” As he took it from my hands, he opened up one end of the saber. He certainly remembered everything about how he’d built it, tugging a few pieces apart (how had he built it to interlock like that? Damn he was good) and plucking the kyber crystal out of its little cradle. Sure enough, the faint blue glow of it showed a crack.

“It was unstable, the blade, like Kylo’s,” I explained. “That’s how I knew it was cracked.” 

“I don’t… how did that happen?” he asked, baffled. 

“Kylo did it by pouring so much pain into the crystal that it cracked.” I raised an eyebrow at him. I had an inkling why his had ended up that way, but I wondered if he did. 

“I… I tried so hard  _ never _ to feel angry. I poured so much effort into covering it and pushing it away…” He was staring into the little shard, looking sadder and sadder. “I’m so sorry, little crystal. I thought that was the right thing to do.”  _ Okay, this is a hell of a moment, but him talking to that crystal shard is so fucking cute.  _

“Too much of a good thing can turn bad,” I said in a soft voice. He sighed, and held the shard in his palm, closing his fist around it. 

“I don’t know how to heal it.”

“Yes you do. You knew how to heal me,” I pointed out, smiling. His eyes flew open, and he opened his fist just enough to stare down into the blue light within it. I wrapped my hands around his, closing it again. “And I healed Kylo. We can do it.” 

His eyes met mine, amber and hopeful in the setting sun. The sky was filled with orange and pink clouds, and an easy breeze kissed our faces. He put his other hand around mine, cradling the little shard, and we closed our eyes. 

I think Matt did most of the work, to be honest. I just poured my energy into him, let him siphon off as much as he needed to gently coax the marred crystal back into wholeness. When I opened my eyes, he was unfurling his hand. 

Sure enough, it was clear and unblemished. It emanated a faint glow that was still blue, but looked strangely a little green to me too. I looked back up at him and smiled. 

“See!”

“Fierce one,” he said softly. “I never would’ve noticed this if you hadn’t shown up.”

“Thank Ben. He’s the one who showed me where it was,” I confessed, giggling. 

“He did?” Matt’s eyes widened. “That little rascal!”

“He’s growing up. I saw him. What is he now, eighteen? Nineteen?” 

“It’s going so fast,” Matt said, smiling a little tearfully. “He’s been a child for too long, I know, but… I’m gonna miss him being small.”

“You’ll love him being grown too, nerd,” I chided him, booping the end of his nose. He giggled and blushed. 

“I’m sure. I can’t wait to see what he wants to learn.” I couldn’t stop smiling, and I leaned up to kiss his cheek. 

“Come on, beautiful not-a-boy. Let’s get the hell outta this water,” I laughed, hauling myself upright. He followed behind me, and we waded back out of the pool. I looked up towards the land where the island rose out of the sea, and almost jumped when I saw Rey. She was watching us from many yards away, but even from this distance I could see the look of awe on her face. Beside me, Matt shook his wet head like a dog coming in from the rain. I flinched and giggled. He was putting his crystal back in its proper place inside his lightsaber, and when he turned it on, the slightly greenish-blue blade was calm and its hum was serene. 

“It worked!” he exclaimed, beaming at me. “We did it!” 

“Maybe I can talk to Kylo about healing his…” I mused. I turned back around, but Rey was gone. _I wonder what she’s thinking?_

“Yes,” said Matt immediately. “You should. I don’t think he’s ever healed anything, but I can help him. Wait-- you said _you_ healed him? And that’s how you knew what to do?” He was staring at me, just now realizing that there was a story he hadn’t yet been told. 

“You missed a lot,” I informed him. “Let’s go back to the hut and get you some dry clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it. Sound good?”

“I love storytime with you,” he replied, blushing and touching my shoulder. I felt myself get warm all over. _Oh my God I missed you so so SO much._

“Alright, let’s go.” I reached for his hand, grabbed Kylo’s satchel from the ground, and we walked up in the fading sunlight back to the village. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T____T
> 
> I LOVE MATT SO MUCH.


	76. Chapter 76

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damn I missed Matt!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some of my favorite smut to-date in this one.

Inside the hut we’d started a fire, and the warm glow of its light was comforting. Now Matt was tidying the pile of stuff that Kylo and I had brought, and pulling out some dry clothes. I had a distinct feeling that I didn’t want either of us to put them on, though, to be honest. I kept thinking about how he’d said he might be a girl, but definitely wasn’t a boy, and wondering what he was feeling about that. It was so exciting, that he was considering his gender in a bigger context, outside the body he’d been sharing. It felt like he was giving himself room to be himself (or herself or themself, whatever!! ahhh!!) and that filled me with joy. 

“Here, let me help,” I said as he started trying to figure out how to undo the damp fabric of his dress, which clung to his body in weird places from the rain. 

“Thanks,” he said, watching my hands start working at the knot at his waist. It pulled free, and then I unwrapped and un-draped him. I leaned down to kiss his belly, his arm, his chest as I did so, watching the way his muscles glistened and noting the softness his body always took on when he was piloting. He giggled and blushed at every kiss, and when I pulled the last of the fabric away from him and he stood stark naked in the firelight with blue flowers in his golden hair… I stared. I couldn’t help it. Matt was so genuinely ethereal to me, despite inhabiting such a huge and unmistakably solid body. 

“You’re the most beautiful creature,” I informed him, laying the fabric with the other damp things which Kylo and I had totally failed to hang out to dry. 

“Maker,” he mumbled, the flush spreading down his neck. “Can I…”

“Yes.” I knew what he wanted, and I desperately wanted it too. He stepped close to me, pulling immediately at my wet shirt and peeling it up my belly and over my shoulders as I raised my arms. He touched my shoulders, rubbing them gently; his eyes drank in the sight of my skin, and he sighed. Leaning down, he took to the clasp of my pants and undid it gently. Taking a knee, he tugged them down my legs and off each of my ankles in turn as I lifted them off the floor. 

“Aeon,” he sighed. “I… I keep wanting to apologize for last night.”

“Don’t,” I advised him softly. “It’s done now. I won’t bring it up, you shouldn’t either.” He shut his eyes, leaning his head on my thigh again. 

“Thank you.” His hands wandered up my legs, stroking them. When he got to my ass, he stroked that too, and squeezed it as he ran his nose over the dip where my hip met my thigh. I knew our skin was still a little salty from the sea water, but I didn’t care. I let my legs drift a little farther apart, my hands reaching down into his tousled hair. He leaned in closer to my cunt, taking a deep inhale. “Oooh,” he sighed, taking to his other knee and pushing my thighs a little farther apart. My heart was already racing, already hungry for him. He looked up at me as his head leaned forward to press his lips against my clit, tucking himself under me so he could do so more fully. I gasped, clutching his locks, staring down at him as he began to lave his tongue flat against me from entrance to bud. 

“Oh fuck,” I whispered, my nerves crackling to life. His hands were on my thighs, holding me with my legs open as I stood there and watched him take my lips into his mouth, licking me clean only to gently suck on my clit and get me all wet again. It was almost like he was literally praying, on his knees there in the firelight. Matt’s attention always felt worshipful, but that sense was even stronger now. I felt my heart and knew it was beating in time with his, felt the energy of the Force moving between us. He hummed against me, shutting his eyes and leaning his head even farther back to plunge his tongue inside my entrance. “Hnn,” I moaned, “Fuck, Matt!” It stroked up against my g-spot, swirled around inside me. I felt my legs start to shake, heat starting to pool down around his mouth. 

Sliding his tongue along my slit and back to my clit, one of his hands left my thigh to rub two fingers against my opening. He looked back up at me now, watching intently as I whimpered and he slid his digits in with a smooth motion. Curling them against my inner wall, the pressure on my g-spot was instant and profound. I gasped, and now I was officially bracing myself with my hands in his hair as my insides started to twist up. 

“Oh God,” I groaned, unable to look away from his heated gaze while he worked me closer and closer to the edge. “Matt, that feels-- so good--”

“Mmmm,” he moaned into my flesh, pace steady, pushing and pushing--

“Fuck!” I yelped, a bolt of pleasure ripping through me and my orgasm pouring out. I shook, trying to stay standing as I heard the wet slaps of his hand and felt his tongue lap at me as I came into his mouth. He pushed me through it, drew it out, watched my face contort as he did so. As the last wave of it washed over me, he finally drew away and stood up, holding my waist to support me. Slipping his wet fingers into my mouth, he stroked against my tongue and my eyes nearly rolled into the back of my head. 

“You taste,” he husked leaning close to my ear, “like I could starve without your cunt in my mouth.”  _ Whoa! Holy fucking shit!  _ I whimpered and swooned, his fingers still in my mouth, leaning up against him and touching his beautiful torso like I’d never felt it before. He pulled his fingers out of my mouth and leaned down to kiss me more assertively than he ever had before, hungry and sensual as he ran his hands all over my back and my ass. He was hard as hell against my belly, and I groaned into his kiss. He started to kneel down, wrapped his huge hands around my waist and hoisted me unceremoniously up. I gasped as our kiss broke and his hands came under my ass, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his torso. I could feel his cock along the curve of my ass; when he hoisted me up further and guided his head to my entrance I was breathless with how strong he was. 

“Ohmigod,” I mewled as he slowly let me sink down onto his length, his breath loud and ragged in my ear. I kept my legs tight as I started to grind my hips, his little groans spurring me on. He was deep inside at this angle, and every movement sent new waves of pleasure crashing through me. 

“Fuck, Aeon,” he murmured into my ear. “You feel  _ amazing. _ ” His hands were wrapped around my thighs, and he was starting to rut into me even as I bounced against him. His nose slid down my neck, buried itself into my shoulder as he breathed hard and hot onto my skin. I was coiling up again, feeling my next orgasm start to swell up from my core. 

“Matt, your cock-- is so--  _ good, _ ” I said between panting, gripping his hair and relishing in the growl he made. His hands locked behind my back, around my waist as his hips started to snap faster, harder. He leaned back away from my torso, drove his hips into me as I began to lean back. I felt tiny, suspended in midair as he held me there with my legs wrapped around him and slammed his hips into mine. My moans were punctuated by his rhythm, and slowly I let myself loll all the way back. He was powerful, and increasingly frantic; the new angle meant every thrust battered my cervix and pressed his majestic girth against me on all sides. “Fuu-uu-uuck! Shit!”

“You-- fuck-- you’re perfect-- fierce little thing-- fuck!--”

“Maaaatt!” I was clenching around him, feeling his torso slap my clit with every thrust, the edge looming near. “Please don’t stop!”

“Cum for me,” he growled, and on command my body obeyed and pushed another orgasm over me. I shook in his arms, clamped down tight around him. As he felt me go limp, he hoisted me back upright. When I looked dazed into his eyes, I saw a voracious hunger there that felt familiar--

“Kylo?” I breathed, as he continued to roll his hips against me. 

“Yes, little one, I’m here,” he cooed. “Matt’s here, too.”

“Oh!” I stared at him, panting, totally surprised. “You can--?”

“Apparently so,” he purred with a smirk, and then he lifted me off his cock and up onto his face while he was still standing. You read that right. He literally hoisted me up to wrap my legs around his neck, held me by my ass, and buried his face in my cunt. 

“Holy shit!” My hands were in his hair tight, and I tried to make sure I was hanging onto him as tightly as I could. If he was using the Force for extra help, I didn’t care. This was insanely hot, and his tongue lapped against my clit with firm, steady strokes. “Kylo!” His hands kneaded my glutes, and he growled into me. My nerves crackled, already overstimulated, and my thighs shook around his face. 

He was walking, heading over to the nest of a bed he’d made, slowly lowering up down and reaching up to hold me under my arms as he laid me down on my back and put his face right back between my legs. 

“Can I eat your ass, Aeon?” he asked, and this time I knew it was Matt asking. 

“Yes!” Lifting my cheeks with my legs spread wide, he was on his knees again and hunched over as his tongue swirled around my asshole. I groaned, felt him working his tongue inside the puckered opening. His hand snaked up to rub my clit, slippery from his mouth, and I yelped and clamped my hand over my mouth. There were only narrow windows in the hut and they were high up, but they weren’t exactly covered with anything. I shuddered as his tongue plunged deeper, his fingers moving intently over my clit-- without warning another orgasm blossomed over me, warm and sudden. “ _ Shit! _ ” I watched a stream of cum splatter out from my cunt, covering my thighs and belly as he kept stroking me. 

“Maker,” he panted when he pulled away finally. “I could watch you cum forever.” He let me lie down properly, ran his tongue along the rivulets of cum on my skin before he sailed up to kiss me again. I reached down in my haze and found his cock, still hard and at attention, and palmed it lazily. He moaned into my mouth, and I got a little less lazy. 

“Let me watch you,” I said as our kiss broke. He whimpered, and I nudged him onto his back so I could scoot down and run my tongue along the underside of his length. I did watch him, swirling my tongue around the spot under his head while he writhed under me. I let myself get sloppy, let my spit pool on his torso under his cock and wiped it up with a finger so I could slip it down to his ass. 

“Fuck!” he moaned as I slid my digit into him, and out of the corner of my eye I saw his toes actually curl. There was something both adorable and really hot about that, and I worked inside him but only teased his prostate. He whimpered as I took all of his length into my mouth, letting him tap the back of my throat. I slid my other hand up towards his face. He leaned forward; I swear to God he wanted me to wrap my hand around his neck, so I obliged. The raspy groan that left him, the way his eyes rolled back into his head-- I was intoxicated, totally obsessed with making him fall apart. I slid a second finger inside him and felt his muscles jerk slightly. Under my hand I felt his Adam’s apple bob as he tried to mewl around my half-choke; I let go his windpipe in favor of pressing up against his jawbone. “Aeon! Fuck me, please!”

“Mmmm, so needy,” I tutted, my lips pressed against his length as my fingers worked, slow and steady and finally pressing against the magic spot. “Wish I had something bigger to fill you with, beautiful thing.” 

“Oh-- oh  _ fuck-- _ ” He was sputtering as I eased a third finger inside him, sucked against the tip of his cock, moved his head around with my hand as I gripped his face. 

“You can’t cum yet, Mattau,” I informed him as I felt his tension rise, slowing down my fingers and leaning up to force him to look at me. He panted, staring rapt into my eyes. “Not yet. And neither can Kylo,” I added, smirking, unsure if Kylo could actually hear me (were they swapping in and out of the pilot and co-pilot’s seats? Could whoever was in co-pilot hear me? I had no idea) but willing to make sure if I could. This seemed to trigger a very sudden shift, though-- Kylo’s eyes were ablaze now, feral as he snarled at me. 

“Who’s giving orders now?” he growled, smirking. I massaged his prostate and felt him jerk beneath me, a profound shudder wracking his body. 

“I am,” I responded, continuing to move my fingers. “Have you ever been fucked before, Master Ren?”

“F-fuck--” He was fighting the intense sensations that rippled through him at my touch, trying so hard to give me some kind of bratty lip but unable to parse out words as readily as usual. 

“Because if not, this is what it feels like,” I cooed, glancing down as his cock twitched and a pearl of precum appeared from the slit. “When you fuck me senseless? This is what you’re doing. This is as intense as one of  _ my  _ orgasms, I hear. Though--” I leaned towards his ear, “--you make mine even better, when you fuck me like that, with your perfect cock. What could I do with a cock like that inside  _ you, _ I wonder?” His fists bunched up the blanket under him, back arching as I worked him slow and steady. 

“I-- I’m--” I pulled my hand out, gentle but swift, and he groaned. “Fuck! I was so close!” 

“I know the feeling,” I smirked at him. His eyes flashed at me, and before I knew it his hands were on my face and he was kissing me ferociously, tongue reaching deep into my throat. Holding my jaw even as my grip on his loosened, his other hand flew down to my crotch and palmed my inflamed clit. I yelped into his mouth, and he slid down the slick between my folds and thrust two fingers inside me, working his whole arm from the shoulder and pulling me right up to the edge of another orgasm quicker than I thought possible as his hand pressed deep and hard into my g-spot. He started moving fast, the wet  _ slap slap slap _ of his palm against me suddenly growing much louder and wetter as I felt my whole body clamp around his fingers and quake. 

“Perfect little slut,” he growled when he broke off the kiss. “You’re so turned on you don’t know what to do with yourself.”

“F-from fucking you,” I sputtered, my body shaking as he sat up and towed me with him. 

“You did learn from the best,” he cooed, and I was beside him on the blankets facing the other way with one of his hands still on my jaw and the other still down between my legs. “Would you like to be filled, little one?” His fingers were slipped down beneath the opening of my ass. 

“Y-yes,” I stammered, staring up into his eyes. He just barely pushed the tips of two of his fingers into me.

“Yes, what?” The glimmer in his eye was wicked, and I wanted to fight it but I kinda wanted to get fucked in the ass more, I won’t lie.

“Yes, sir,” I breathed. “Please, sir!”

“Good little thing.” I gasped as he put them all the way in, still covered in my own cum. He worked me like I’d worked him, finding the spots that made my guts clench up and working them deep and slow. “So polite when I fuck your lovely ass.”

“It-- it’s  _ so-- _ good,” I mewled, peals of pleasure rippling through me. “Fuck!” 

“Another?” His thumb stroked my jaw gently.

“Please, sir!” As he eased a third finger into me, my legs spasmed involuntarily. I breathed hard, and his movements were gentle at first.

“Does that feel good, little one?”

“Y-yes, yessir!”

“Good.” He was working me again, not yet in to the knuckles, and I was falling limp. His hand moved from my chin to my hair-- the tufts of it had grown out just enough, he realized, that he could fist it and tug. When he did, fire roared across my nervous system and I sagged, eyes rolling.

“Shit!”

“I  _ love, _ ” he started, his smile vicious and ravenous, “what a beautiful little slut you are, apprentice. I love that when I pulled your hair, you loved it so much your body drew my fingers all the way inside you.” I realized dully that he was now moving the entire length of his three fingers in and out of my ass with relish.  _ Oh. Well that’s great, _ I thought hazily, already on my way to another orgasm. 

“F-fuck--”

“Pardon?” he asked, tugging my hair again. I groaned. 

“Thaaaank you, sir.” 

“Anything for you, little one.” I felt my pelvic floor start to jerk, to stutter around the precipice. “Wait.” He stopped his fingers, and I shook and moaned forlornly. His hand came onto my cheek, and my eyes swam up to his face-- it was changed again. 

“Can I fuck your ass, Aeon?”  _ God, I love how he asks. He’s so perfect.  _

“Please,” I sighed. Matt moved me back into a lying position, taking to his knees and sitting so he could open my legs and splay them wide. Unable to help himself, his mouth descended to my clit before he did anything else. I gasped and whimpered as he slid his fingers inside my ass again, just to be sure I was still ready. My legs had started to shake by the time he pulled his mouth away, and I was about ready to kick and scream at being held on the edge again. But then he sat back and let a trail of spit fall from his mouth to his cock, and stroked himself; I was enthralled, watching him glance at me with burning eyes and then look at my asshole and then at his cock and back again. 

“Should I start slow?” he asked as he positioned himself. 

“Yes,” I breathed, trembling with anticipation. And he did begin slowly, pushing the head of his length inside me. I reached down to touch my clit, letting the pleasure radiating from it knock the tension out of my body. “Pull my hair,” I instructed him breathlessly, and he reached up and gave a tug. I moaned, and he slid a little farther in.  _ Damn, that’s kinda fucked up, _ I thought.  _ But also, a great hack for my body. Duly fucking noted.  _

“Shit!” He was easing in deep now, and I was in ecstacy, body spasming around him. He watched himself disappear inside me, his chest heaving. “Aeon--”

“Fuck me, sweet thing,” I cooed, taking a fistful of his hair in my other hand and watching a little blue flower drop out of it and onto my chest. He growled and started to thrust; my body sang, and I bit back a wail. “F-fuck! Yes! Like that!”

“Holy fuck,” he panted, eyes rolling up towards me. “Oh  _ shit-- _ Aeon-- your ass-- fuck!”

“It’s so good, Matt, it’s  _ so fucking good, _ ” I blathered, and I felt his hands grip my thighs and hold me still as he kept on going at his intense pace. “Ah! Please! Put your fingers inside me!” 

Obediently, he looked down and slid a finger into my cunt. I growled and bucked my hips; he added another. I sighed, and they worked in tandem with his hips as his pace quickened 

“Is it perfect, sir?” he rasped, curling his fingers just so-- my back arched, and I felt myself rapidly hurdling towards abandon. 

“It’s-- it’s so-- perfect-- you inside me--”

“Have I pleased you, sir?”

“Oh  _ God _ yes--”

“Can I cum when I’m ready, sir?” My eyes floated to his, instantly obsessed with this subservience-from-the-top he was doing. 

“Absolutely, pet.” His eyes burned when I called him that, his pace picked up a little more. I was so twisted up in how good I felt, I was running out of the capacity for words. A string of curses and moans left me instead, and he growled and grunted and for a second I saw his eyes flash-- was that Kylo?

“I have-- never-- seen someone-- like you-- little one,” he panted, fingers working me harder. “You-- you’re so--  _ fuck!--  _ so impossible-- so  _ fucking-- _ gorgeous--”

“Hnn fuuuuck!” I started to yowl, and his other hand clamped down on my mouth.

“So loud-- little slut-- so fully-- present-- shit--  _ arrgh-- _ ”

“Mmmph!” I bawled into his hand, tears pooling in my eyes as I felt myself start to get so, so close. 

“Can you-- feel me-- Aeon?” he asked, eyes changing again, energy crackling between and around us. Matt was staring down at me now. “I--  _ fuck-- _ I feel every-- every part of you--”

I gave a ragged scream into his hand, and his hips started to slam into me.

“Fuck!” The vice of my pelvic floor was wrapped around him fully; the power of my muscles as they pushed more pleasure out of me than I was aware existed towed him right off the edge with me. Our orgasms were nearly simultaneous, and he shook as his pace became erratic, fingers still desperately digging the entirety of my climax out. When he stilled, I fell completely limp. He pulled out of me slowly, and took to the blanket beside me with one hand as he reached out to pull me into him. Our bodies cradled each other as my eyes looked beyond everything and into vastness, the universe spinning on without me. I was shuddering and shaking in spasms as my nerves lit up and died down, lit up and died down. The undertow of my orgasm dragged me out of thought and time-- I felt only it, and his body close to me, his hands on my flesh, the deep tide of his breathing. 

_ Holy fucking hell,  _ was the first thought I did finally have. But I wasn’t yet actually capable of saying it out loud, or controlling any part of my body at all, so I just laid there and drifted back to reality. 

“Fuck,” he sighed, and I wondered which of them was piloting after that madness. “That’s never happened before.” 

In response, I tried to groan, and was about half successful. He chuckled.

“You’re still gone, aren’t you?” I felt his hand on my cheek. I half-groaned again. I could feel the energy that cycled between us-- both the energy of Matt and the energy of Kylo. “You’re so beautiful,” he added. 

“Hmm.” That was a successful groan. I could almost see his face swimming into view.

“Where do you go? When you’re like this?” he asked, fascinated. 

“Hmmmmm.” I tried to find a word. “Heaven.” He chuckled again. 

“Without me?” 

“You-- you’re right here.” Now he really laughed, and pulled me in even closer. 

“You seem so far away, but also I feel you everywhere,” he mused. “Can you see right now?” 

“No,” I sighed, letting my bleary eyes wander around seeking focus. “Soon.”

“That’s amazing.” He was shaking his head, running his hand through my hair. “My fierce one, I’m so lucky to love you. I can’t even understand it.” 

_ Oh. It’s Matt, who’s out now.  _ I felt my heartbeat flutter, the relief I’d been feeling about his return to my life washing over me once again.

“How-- was that?” I asked, hoping he would understand what I meant. 

“Um, perfect, as always?” he giggled. 

“No-- with Kylo.” 

“Oh, that! That was… kinda awesome.” 

“Mmmm. Good.” I mean, if it was gonna happen sometimes, I hoped he liked it. I certainly fucking did.

“I felt everything. But I wasn’t always the one flying, and when Kylo took over…” His face was finally coming into focus, and I blinked as I stared into his deep brown eyes. “I got to feel you fall apart. It… you’re incredible to watch.” He was staring back, just as taken as I was. 

“Kylo must’ve felt me fucking you, too, then,” I murmured, grinning.

“I think he liked it,” Matt whispered, like it was a dirty secret. 

“I know he did.” My hands, soft and weak in the afterglow, ran across his flesh. “You’re beautiful, Matt. I’m-- I’m sorry these past few days have been so hard for you.”

“It’s okay. I deserved some of it.” 

“Hmm.”  _ I doubt it, but okay. I mean, maybe a little, but. Still sucks.  _

“I feel better now. I feel like… I dunno. Safe.” That made my heart swell. 

“I love you,” I sighed. 

“Yeah. I love you, too.” For a while, we just laid there and held each other in silence. Then, I was jolted awake by Matt moving around and straightening up the bed-nest. I hadn’t even realized I was falling asleep. 

“Hm?” I asked despite not hearing anything.

“Come on, little bug,” he giggled, wrapping me up under a blanket with him. “You’re the fiercest thing I know, but you must be beat. Get some sleep.” 

“Angel,” I sighed. 

“Mhm,” he cooed, humoring my sleepiness. “Right here to help you get cozy.” 

“Cinnamon roll.” 

“I don’t know what that is, but sure.”

“You--” I was almost awake again with horror at the idea that Matt had never had an actual cinnamon roll. “Fuck. Gotta make ya one.”  _ Assuming there’s cinnamon somewhere in this universe. _

“One day. Lay back down, you nerf herder,” he laughed, tugging me back against him and nuzzling my neck. “Dream well.”

“Hope I dream about you,” I sighed. I felt him giggle, and then I was gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you ever get woozy after editing your own smut? ooooooof. <3


	77. Chapter 77

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I believe in a thing called love.

The next day the sky was full of puffy white clouds, and I was sitting looking out at the ocean from the meditation spot I remembered Luke sitting on from _Episode VIII._ Actually, he died there, technically. But that didn’t feel weird or bad, since he had been so present for me through the Force for this entire ridiculous story. I felt calm, centered, full of love. But Rey was still in her own head, and I was thinking about if there was any way I could encourage her to trust herself more than she already did. I mean, jokes about the predictable writing aside, finding out that the worst Sith lord in recent history was your grandpappy was genuinely rattling. I got it. But also, fuck that! She could be her own person-- hell, she’d already been being herself rather unapologetically this whole series of films. Surely there was some way to show her that she could get back to that, that really she’d never left? 

“Aeon?” came a soft, low voice behind me. I turned and saw a familiar form walking out towards me. But something about the awkward movements of his body, and the way I didn’t feel the same ebb and flow of the Force between us as I did with his alters, gave away who I was talking to. 

“Howdy, Ben,” I said with a smile. “How are you today?”

“You always know it’s me,” he said, returning my smile. 

“I feel pretty lucky to be connected to your system the way I am.”

“Nobody else ever was.” 

“Well, they didn’t understand. People resist what they don’t understand. I get it.” He was approaching now, and he sat down next to the slab of rock I was sitting on. Looking up at me, he sighed. 

“Yeah. I’m okay. I walked around some today, and I almost caught one of the little weird bird-things.” I grinned.

“They’re called porgs. And they’re hard to catch, man, I tried the other day,” I told him. “You like being out?”

“Yeah, but the body is kinda… I just feel like I’m really clumsy.” 

“You’ll get used to it, I promise. Matt’s been getting good at piloting.”

“I sure hope so.” His amber eyes wandered back out to the sea below. “This place is beautiful.”

“It really is,” I agreed, eyes following his. “And strong with the Force. You tried to use it yet?”

“A little,” he replied. “I lifted some rocks.”_ Ah yes, a classic training method. _

“Nice. Good first steps,” I said. “I started out lifting stuff.”

“It’s harder than I thought. To do it on purpose.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”  _ Levitating a bunch of shit when you’re just miffed? Cakewalk. _ But Ben didn’t seem angry much, in fact I saw him scared more than anything else. “You still gonna build a lightsaber?”

“I want to. I don’t have a kyber crystal, though,” he said, seeming a little bummed. “Dunno where I’ll get one.”

“We’ll sort it out. I’m sure Kylo knows, he managed to find one for me,” I assured him. 

“I get worried he won’t want me to use a lightsaber,” Ben confessed, looking back at me.

“I think he and Matt will be worried about you, but I also think they’ll want you to become your own person and learn what you wanna learn.” I smiled.

“Hope so. I’m used to them being really protective of me and not letting me out much.”

“Well, I dunno if you noticed, but your system lives a risky life,” I chuckled. “But you’re growing up. You’ll get better at handling it, and things are gonna change pretty soon.” 

“Yeah.” He looked worried. “I dunno how, though.” 

“Me neither,” I sighed. “But we’re in this together.” 

“Thanks,” he said, giving me a tiny smile. “You keep saying ‘my system’, is that what you call someone like me and Kylo and Matt?”

“It’s just a term for a person with multiple people in their body,” I explained as vaguely as I could. I mean, I wasn’t about to start quoting the DSM at Ben. But having words to explain yourself, to describe yourself… I knew how powerful that could be. 

“So there’s more people like us?” he asked, and I saw that special light in his eyes. The one that says  _ oh shit, I’m not alone. _

“Yep. Sure are. Not a whole lot, but they’re out there. I knew a couple systems back home.” A weird pang radiated through me, having not thought about home-- Earth-- for a long time. What was weird was how far away it felt, how much like I was talking about another life almost. One I was recovering from, moving away from. Not quite missing like I used to. But guilt came up with it, and sat like a rock in my gut. 

“Really?” Ben’s look brightened even more. I nodded. 

“Some of them name their whole system, to make it easier to refer to the group. And a lot of them have even more than three people in them.”

“Oh,” he said, brow knitting in thought. “I never thought about a name for all three of us. I guess not a lot of people referred to us as people in a unit. Like a team.”

“Well, it might help me,” I said, smiling, letting the weird home-related guilt sink into the background. “And I mean, anyone else who knows y’all later on. Who gets to know your system. I mean, even Rey and Finn and Poe were trying to understand it, and they weren’t doing half bad.” 

“Wow.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I’ll have to think about that. Maybe Kylo and Matt can help.”

“For sure.” 

“Thanks, Aeon. It’s really good, to know I’m not the only one.” He smiled at me again, looking up from his seat. _He’s so sweet. I’m so proud of him,_ I thought.

“Yeah, it made Kylo and Matt feel better too,” I said with a grin. “Glad you got to hang out some today and do your own thing. And came to say hello.” 

“Yeah, me too,” he said, blushing. I started to worry that he might have a crush on me, in that moment. _U_ _ h oh. He’s too young, right? That’s… maybe he’s just shy and stuff.  _ Plus, an admiration crush from a teenager wasn’t the same as a romantic or sexual attraction from an adult, and I resolved to keep the two firmly separated.  _ What even are the ethics of something like that? Oof. _ I pushed the thought from my mind, since I had no idea how to address it. I’d ask one of his alters later.

“You can hang, I’m just in a thinkin’ mood today.” 

“It’s okay. I’m kinda tired. Plus it’s nice to just sit,” he assured me, looking back out to sea.

“I think so, too.” For a little while, we just sat in silence. Weird possible-crush aside, it was nice to share some space with Ben for a little while. Just let him hang out and be a person. Self-actualization is a helluva drug.  But then, I felt the ripple of the Force shifting around me. 

“Hello, little one.” I glanced down to see Kylo’s squared shoulders, his face that was so often on the edge of stern. 

“Hey big boy,” I replied. “Come out to enjoy the weather with me?” 

“That, and I felt something. Do you know where I’ve been today?”

“Ben was out exploring the island and lifting some rocks with the Force, he told me.” I watched a crease of habitual concern appear in his brow and almost giggled. Ben knew his alters well.

“I suppose this is maybe the safest place in the galaxy for him to do that,” Kylo murmured, as though he were trying to convince himself. 

“Don’t worry about him,” I chuckled. “You’re right. This rock is pretty chill despite the Force being so spooky. But Ben told me he had his own experience the other night in the cave, when Matt was there.”

“I thought he felt changed. He’s growing up really fast.” Kylo rubbed his chin. “Maybe too fast.”

“He’s been a kid for an awful long time,” I pointed out. “I feel like he’s growing up as fast as he wants to.”

“He’s not a child anymore, that’s certain. Maybe not even a teenager.”

“Oh wow.” A day ago he’d been nineteen at most, but seeing him in the body kinda threw my perception of him off. “Okay, that’s pretty fast. But I really think he’s ready to be grown, even if he doesn’t have a range of experience.” 

“His experience in the cave might’ve catalyzed some growth.” Kylo was pondering this hard. I reached down to stroke his hair. 

“Talk to him. Let him tell you what’s going on.” 

“Of course.” He looked up at me, and that little perma-smile that had taken up residence on his expression appeared. “Hello, my little love,” he said, as if he had just remembered that I was here again. That made me smile, and made my stomach flutter.

“Hey. How are you?” 

“Better now.” He reached up to stroke my cheek._ Ohmigod. He’s SO fuckin’ SQUISHY!_ I was continually surprised by Kylo’s romanticism. I mean, y’all. Seriously. After the way this started? It boggles the mind.

“You’re so silly.”

“About you, yes. Can I join you?” He stood, towering over me, and I knew he wanted to sit on the rock, too. 

“Sure, if you can fit.” I scooched over, and he managed to fit just fine. One of his big arms wrapped around my shoulders, and his other hand reached over to hold one of mine. 

“How are you today, little thing?”

“Better now.” I couldn’t help myself. It was true. 

“Are you convening with the Force?” He chuckled. 

“Mostly I was thinking about how to talk to Rey about what we’re gonna do, and hopefully get her on board. I get scared we’re wasting time, here,” I confessed.

“If we need her, none of this time is wasted.” _Wow, that sounds like something I would say._ I squeezed his hand.

“You’re right. Thanks.” I looked back out to sea. “I guess it’s scary to find out you're the legacy of as big a shitbird as someone like Palpatine.” 

“It wasn’t pleasant for me when I learned about my lineage, either.” 

“See, I told her to talk to you and Luke. I thought y’all might understand.” 

“That’s fair,” he said. “Perhaps I should.”

“Kylo?” I asked, a sudden thought occurring to me.

“Yes, little one?”

“Did you see anything when you and Ben and Matt were all down at the cave, that night?” His eyes fell to the rock, then out to sea. 

“I did.”

“Do… you wanna talk about it?” I looked up at his face, which was hard to read. I felt trepidation and maybe even a shred of fear from him, which surprised me even though it maybe shouldn’t have. We’d all had a hell of a time down there, after all. 

“I’m not sure how to,” he replied. “I think the journey is unfinished.” 

“Oh yeah?” Now I was fascinated. 

“Yes. I have… I’m not sure. Something else has to heal. I feel blocked, somehow.” Boy, did I know that feeling. Like you’d made progress, but now you were stuck. My mouth twisted in thought. 

“Did Matt leave you a note about what happened yesterday?”

“Actually, he did,” Kylo replied, looking back at me. “This morning, I think. I read it before Ben came out, I guess, because that’s the last thing I remember before being here with you.” I canted my head. “He said he’s not sure he’s a boy. I franky suspected as much,” he continued, smiling a little. “I admit I should’ve been more present for him, learning this about himself.”

“You were a little distracted by being Supreme Leader,” I reminded him gently. “He said I was the one who helped him with that.” Now a couple of tears filled my eyes as a feeling of something that really I can only describe as love washed over me. Sure, I felt proud-- or honored, maybe-- to have facilitated something that important for Matt. But more than anything I was elated that he was becoming himself. 

“You’re a singular creature,” Kylo said, letting go my hand to lift my chin up towards his face in that way that made me swoon every time. “He also told me you figured out his crystal was cracked, and helped him heal it.” 

“I did.” 

“How’d you do it?” He seemed especially interested, and I realized very suddenly that he was, for the first time ever, considering that his might be healed too. 

“He did it. I just gave him my energy, I don’t really know how else it worked,” I said, meeting his eyes with sudden purpose. “You... you could try healing yours.” I saw his hesitation, his worry. But he returned my gaze, and put his hand on my cheek.

“Will you help me, too?”

“Of course.” My heart started beating a little harder. _Wow, both of them needed this._ It seems obvious, in retrospect. “I have them with me.” I nodded back towards my bag, which was on the ground behind the rock we sat on. I’d packed some food, a water canteen, and the sabers. For whatever reason, I’d been wanting them nearby lately. (Maybe all the retraumatization, but…)

He just nodded, swallowing his anticipation. I turned and pulled the bag open, leaning down to pull his saber out of it gingerly. Holding it up to him, he wrapped his hand around mine on the hilt of it. Much as he’d once done in the meditation room on the Supremacy, while I was working on building my own. Our eyes met again, and the Force was coalescing on us. I could feel it everywhere, could feel his fear and pain and regret. For all the things he’d done with this blade in the name of protection, forgetting what was right or wrong by his own judgement in favor of what would keep his system alive. 

Suddenly the world around seemed bleached out and far away. Kylo’s eyes slid shut, and I realized that there were two figures standing behind him-- Matt, blonde and slouchy, a tender look on his face. And beside him was Ben, who was indeed taller and filling out, officially a young man. He looked softer than Kylo, his hair shorter, his eyes still wide and youthful and drinking in everything he saw with curiosity and interest. They were both looking at Kylo, and reaching out to put their hands on each of his shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” Kylo muttered, and I saw a tear slide out of his eye and down his cheek. “I should’ve been there for you both more.”

“It’s okay,” Matt said. “You did everything you knew how. We understand.”

“Yeah, Kylo,” Ben added, his voice in that strange place where its final break was looming and so it slid between a tenor and a baritone with his vowels. “You were just trying to help. And you’re here now. We love you.” 

“I love you both,” Kylo said, another tear escaping him. “That’s why I did everything I did.”

“You don’t have to regret anything. Things are different now.” Suddenly Matt looked up at me, smiling his sweet, goofy smile. “We can make our own choices, now. All of us.”

“That’s right,” Ben added, glancing up at me with that bashful little smile of his. “We don’t have to do that stuff anymore.”  I was smiling, and now a couple tears fell down my cheeks too. Every fuckin' time.   


“I suppose it’s true that if I hadn’t done what I did,” Kylo said, eyes sliding open to look at me now, “we would never have gotten where we are.” 

“This story isn’t over,” I said. “Your story isn’t over. I feel like it's really just getting started.” I realized in the back of my mind that _my_ story felt like it was only just beginning, too. I had a whole life ahead of me. One that didn’t have to look like struggling, clawing my way out of my own brain whenever possible. Whether I was here or home, at the end of it all, I’d learned a thing or two about being what I was. _Shit. _

They were all smiling at me, and suddenly a hand came up around my back. I glanced up beside me and saw Luke, a faint grin on his face, reaching out to put his hand on the hilt of Kylo’s saber. 

“You got it, kid,” was all he said. Then, the light around us grew so bright I couldn't see anything else. 

When my vision came back, Kylo and I were alone on the rock in the sunshine. The hilt was in our hands still, and I looked at it before looking back at him. His eyes were on the hilt, and I felt his finger move to the ignition. 

A blade, white and radiant, shot up between us. It was calm, pure and solid, humming in that way only a lightsaber ever did. My eyes flew wide open. 

“Holy shit!” I breathed. “You did it!” Kylo’s eyes were fixed on the blade, its bright beam reflected in his eyes. My face broke into a smile, then a laugh. “You  _ did _ it!” 

“We did,” he said, looking back at my face with the most profound look of joy on his face. “All of you helped me. I feel… fuck, I feel so much better.” Now he almost laughed, and shut the blade off before tugging the hilt away and wrapping me up in a big hug, burying his face in the crook of my neck. I leaned into him, hands stroking his huge back. His pain was relieved, and while it probably wasn’t gone forever (I mean pain never is, it’s like, the human condition, man) it was like something was healed that had been aching inside him for a really long time. I started laughing again from the sheer palpable relief in the air.

“Kylo,” I murmured, “I’m so proud of you. All three of you, really.” His arms just tightened around me, wet tears on my neck. We sat there like that for a moment, a weight off both our chests. 

“Thank you, Aeon,” he said finally, drawing back up to look at me and take my face in his hands. “How I’ll ever thank Luke for bringing you to me, I don’t know.” 

“I think he’s just relieved that I managed to pull off helping you out,” I chuckled. “Neither of us knew what to do. But I knew I was gonna try and make you feel loved again.” _I mean shit,_ I thought, _your fans fucking ADORE you. If I brought the love of just one of us..._

“You did,” he breathed, putting our foreheads together. “You reminded me there were other ways to love, too.” 

“Now you know what I meant when I said I believed in love, hm?” 

“I do.” He let out a breathless laugh. “What a thing to say to me, at such a moment. I heard it in my head constantly, after you said it.” _Okay, I feel a LOT less cheesy about having said it, now. _

“Well I’m glad, I guess,” I said. “If it helped.”

“Fierce little thing,” he sighed. “You’re a wonder.” He held me like that, our faces very close, until a strange feeling tugged both of our attention. Back away from the precipice we sat near, Rey was standing once again watching us. But this time, there were tears in her eyes too. Everybody on that island was up in their feelings, these past couple days. I looked at her, head still leaned against Kylo’s giving her a faint smile. His eyes slid over to her too. 

“I…” She shook her head, clearly still processing. “I’ve never seen something like that before. And with Matt, too.” 

“Well,” Kylo murmured, glancing back at me. “This one loves to break the rules.” I snorted.

“I’m still afraid,” Rey said. “But… if you’re both with me…” Now I sat upright, feeling myself brighten. 

“We’re with you,” I assured her. “All the way. Until the end.” 

“Yes,” Kylo agreed. “And I’m sorry I didn’t go about it better than I did, before now.” 

“Yeah, well, thanks for that.” She was smiling. “I’m… I’m not going to be like him.”

“I believe you won’t,” I said. “You never have been, after all. Losing your temper… that’s just like anybody else, but with extra Force-user liabilities. We’re all working on that.” 

“Yeah.” She nodded, blinking the tears out of her eyes. “We should go soon, shouldn’t we?” 

“Yes,” Kylo nodded. “We really should.” 

“Let’s prepare, and leave in the morning,” she suggested. “We still need a plan.” 

“We can work on that tonight, rest up and leave at first light,” he said, glancing at me.

“Alright.” She squared her shoulders, resolute. “I’m going down to the cave. I have one last thing I want to do, before we go.” And then she turned, heading across the grassy hillocks of the island in the direction of the spooky sinkhole. I gave a huge sigh. 

“Oh, thank God,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I was scared that was gonna be a lot harder than it was.” 

“Once again, just being what you are seems to leave quite the impression,” Kylo said, smiling at me in his tender way. I chuckled. 

“Ain’t that the truth.”_ Try being in the hospital during an episode,_ I thought. _That leaves a HELL of an impression._ “So, this is our last afternoon in peace in this beautiful place. Anything you wanna do?” I asked him, smiling, finally feeling happy despite the looming reality that we were definitely about to go knock on Palpatine’s front door. Fuck it, right? Why dwell, it’ll happen soon enough.

“Oh,” Kylo purred, leaning close to me again. “I can think of one thing...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got really attached to the idea that a cracked crystal would be more problematic, regardless of its color, than an intact one. to me the processes of each of them healing their crystals has been a major component of their redemption. i dunno if it'll ever happen in canon, but wouldn't it be tight if it did? well, not to Ben, of course... T-T
> 
> anyway. borrowed the purification of the red saber from Ahsoka's badass purification of the sabers she wields, so shout out to her. thanks for reading ^_^


	78. Chapter 78

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo lets his guard down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a smut chapter f'sho.

I haven’t been naked in the sunlight in a really, really long time. Maybe ever, actually, now that I think about it. Lying in the lush grass on Ahch-To tucked up against a slab of rock, white clouds dancing around the sun as it slid slowly away from its peak in the sky, parts of me that had never really gotten any direct input of vitamin D were slowly being revealed by Kylo’s enormous, deft hands. 

He pulled the zipper of my vest down slowly, his big beautiful nose buried in the crevice of my jaw beneath my ear. As he did so, he left soft, plush kisses on the delicate skin of my neck. I sighed, one hand on his chest, sliding under the hem of his baggy shirt to skim over his abs hungrily. But his hands tugged my vest off my shoulders, so I withdrew to slip my arms out of the sleeves. His fingers danced over my skin, his mouth closing over one nipple and sending a little crack of thunder through my entire body. He was half beside me and half over me, one hand sliding down to untie the top of my pants and tug the waistband a little more open. But he had to slide his face over to the other nipple first, had to twirl his tongue around it and wind up my nervous system even more first. Then he hauled up to his knees, and his hands on either side of my hips began to pull my pants down, over my legs and bare feet and off into the grass. Leaning back on his haunches to look at me, his eyes were intent as they raked down my body.

“Mm, little thing. You make me so hungry,” he said, voice soft and somehow both tender and predatory at the same time. My hand was on one of his glorious quads, wandering up towards the hem of his shirt again. I sat up, pushing the fabric more.

“Let me get you ready for dinner, then,” I murmured, and he tugged the shirt the rest of the way off obligingly. I ran my hands over his pecs, eyes drinking in the sight of his glorious body under the warm sun. I leaned up to put a kiss on his collar bone, his sternum, over each of his nipples, on his solar plexus, above his belly button. “It’s an informal dress code.” 

As I kissed my way down to the hem of his trousers, he took a deep breath. I was feeling really assertive, all of a sudden. Maybe it was the sense of impending doom and possible death, I dunno. But I was oh-so-ready for this. I scooted up onto my knees, my hands at the clasp that would free his straining arousal from its confines, and stared into his eyes. As though he knew what I wanted, he leaned down and kissed me. His mouth was sensual and warm, his movements indulgent, his hands by his sides as I gently reached into his opened trousers and took his magnificent cock in my hands. I slid my tongue into his mouth as I started to stroke him, and he groaned. When I took a fistful of his black hair into my hands and tugged it, I felt his body shiver. I tugged my mouth away from his, but not before running my tongue around the inside perimeter of his lips. 

“Lie back,” I instructed him, and he shifted off his knees and back against the slope of the boulder our grassy patch was adjacent to. His eyes were glazed, now, staring at me as I pulled his pants the rest of the way off and flung them away. Pushing myself between his legs, I stared down at his twitching length, crowned with a pearl of precum, reaching for me. “Fuck, Kylo,” I breathed, taking his sack in one hand to knead it. “You have the prettiest cock I’ve ever seen.”

“Fuck,” he hissed, watching me as I bent down to lick the head of him clean and massage the underside of it with my tongue. His breathing got harder very quickly. I was surprised at how passive he was being, how much he seemed to feel my desire to wring all sorts of sounds out of him. I stroked him with my hand and pulled back to spit on his cock, which caused his eyelids to flutter in a very satisfying way. Staring up at him through my eyebrows, I began to pump him slowly. “Shit--!” 

“Who’s got a dirty mouth today, hm?” I teased him, smirking. He just stared back at me. “Is my big lovely thing going to beg as prettily as I do?” When his jaw actually fell open, I felt myself flush with excitement. 

“Are you going to make me beg, Aeon?” he husked. I felt my smirk get broader, and more devious. 

“I’m going to make you weep, Kylo.” The flash in his eyes was one of pure arousal.  _ I totally get why he likes this so much, like 100%. _ Eyeing my discarded trousers, I grabbed them when an idea struck me. Pulling the drawstring out, I bent back over his aching length and took his head into my mouth as I tied the string-- gently, but effectively-- around the base of him. 

“What--”

“I control when you cum,” I informed him huskily, rising up to grab his hair again, put my face very close to his, other hand still stroking him. He was almost stiff, bracing himself as though he struggled to contain something, nostrils flaring. I could feel the ebb and flow of energy between us, but it was getting bigger and faster and wilder by the second. I realized that I could tie his hands to the grass with the Force, and his feet too.  _ Oh, so this is how he does it? _ “Your body is mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he breathed, and I couldn’t tell if he was infuriated or profoundly turned on. Which was classic, for him, but this was the opposite of the usual scenario. I pressed my mouth against his ear, squeezing as I tugged his cock. 

“Good boy.” He shuddered, head bending down to stare at me as I pulled back away and nestled myself between his thighs. His knees were bent, so I pushed them apart until I was happy with the room I had and then I tacked them to the ground. His cock was slowly turning red above the tie, and when I took it fully into my mouth he almost bucked his hips. Except that he couldn’t, because I’d bound him there. He growled, and then as I bobbed up and down, fell to moans. 

I was lavish, giving him a show by puckering my lips and turning my head so he could see his cock bulging inside my cheek. Covering him in spit, I let trails of it hang between him and my mouth, let them run down my chin and fall onto my chest. Coating my fingers in the spittle that was pooling on his abdomen, I began to stroke his entrance slowly, feeling him tense up. 

“Last night,” I purred, looking up at him, “I think you got a taste of something new. Would you like to try it again, Kylo?” He stared at me, almost nervous, but unmistakably interested.

“Gently,” he murmured, eyes locked on me. I used careful little circles to slowly tease him open, my other hand still stroking under the head of his cock. When one finger began to enter him, it stopped for a moment as he tightened, his anxiety apparent. 

“Breathe, sweet thing,” I instructed, and he took in a huge breath obediently. As he let it out, my digit slid in properly-- and as soon as I crooked it against his prostate, he shuddered and went limp around it. I worked him slowly, didn’t add another finger. I didn’t need to. He was panting and arching his back against the rock as much as he could under the strain of my invisible bonds, my head bobbing as I took his cock into my throat again while I wound him up tight from the inside. When I looked back up at him, he was watching me through fluttering eyelids.

“How’s that feel, big boy?”

“Fuck,” he swore, gasping. 

“Excuse me?” 

“It-- it feels-- incredible-- but--”

“But what?”

“I need to cum,” he almost growled, voice low. I raised an eyebrow, and slid my finger out of his ass smoothly. A noise of dissatisfaction rumbled quiet in his throat. 

“You know, I don’t think that’s your best begging on record,” I said, stroking his cheek before I stood up and planted one foot on either side of his torso. His eyes fell down between my legs. “But, I’ve been greedy. You said you were hungry.” I bent down, lifting his chin up so I could look into his eyes which were darkening even in the afternoon sunlight. “You should eat.” 

“Please.” His eyes blazed, and I smiled at his shaky attempt to get into a more subordinate position.  I turned, feet now on opposite sides of him, and settled my ass back gently. He was slouched back against the rock in such a way that I could very nearly literally sit on his face. I bent forward to grant him more access as he purred and his tongue lapped against my folds-- which were soaking wet, obviously-- and ran my hand down over his stomach towards the needy red head of his cock. When he suckled at my stiff clit, I moaned and sighed. 

“Is that good, hm?” I asked, rubbing the sensitive spot under the head of his length. He moaned into my cunt, and I felt him nod. “What do you say when someone brings you such a generous meal?” I lifted myself off his mouth just long enough to let him answer. 

“Thank you,” he gasped, and I smiled.

“You’re so welcome, my sweet. I know you strong young men are so  _ hungry _ all the time.” 

“Mmmph,” he groaned as he licked between my folds. Then he plunged his tongue inside me, and I felt my body tighten. 

“Fuck!” I rocked against his face, listening to his muffled grunts as my body started to light up and my hand continued to tease his erection. His tongue came down flat over my clit, which sent a jolt through my guts. Now I really ground against him, each movement amplifying the crackles of pleasure running through me. “Oh God, yes. Kylo, do you want me to cum on your face?” 

“Mmmmmth,” was his only reply. I gave his slowly purpling cock a tiny little slap, and he jerked with a sound that was both a snarl and a whimper. 

“You love to clean up-- ahh-- my cum with your lovely mouth-- shit-- don’t you?” He just whimpered again, and I could see his muscles straining, could feel the desperation coming off him to taste it. So I picked up my grinding motion back against his face, heard him sucking in breaths through his nose as I did it. I stopped touching his cock, let it strain up against his stomach as I focused on the mounting intensity of the electricity under my skin. “Oh-- shit--  _ fuck _ yes--!” 

It broke over me suddenly, washing over me in hot waves of pleasure. I shook, propping myself up with my hands on his chest, a string of mewls exiting me. I saw his cock twitch and move, as though it wanted to get even harder somehow. Slowly I let my orgasm run its course, and then I stood up (only slightly wobbly) and nudged his knees down. I let them move enough for him to straighten them out. Then they were pinned down on the ground again, and I sank onto my knees in the grass with his cock beneath my dripping cunt. 

“Holy shit!” He was too fucked up by how I was positioned, ass right there in his lap, cock beneath my warm opening, to gasp out anything more elegant, apparently. I turned my head back to look at him as I sucked in air, coming down from the heights. 

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” I teased, shifting my weight a little maliciously. His heavy-lidded eyes bore holes in me, his face covered in the sheen of my orgasm, his mouth rubbed until it was red. 

“Fuck-- Aeon, please, for fuck’s sake--”

“I believe you beg for your own sake, boy.” I glared at him dangerously.

“Please,  _ please _ let me inside you. Please, Aeon, I want to feel you like this.” Now he looked much closer to desperate, and I just slid my hips up and down, wet lips stroking him, watched his face contort as he saw the head of his cock peek out from between my ass cheeks and disappear again over and over. 

“Where do you want what to be?” I asked him sweetly, looking back and not stopping my movements. 

“I--  _ shit--  _ I want-- I want my cock-- inside your perfect cunt-- little one-- please--”

“I like it when you call me ‘little one’ even while I’m on top of you, making you beg,” I cooed, leaning back against his incredible body. Lifting a hand up to the side of his face, I tilted my head back so I could nip at the underside of his jaw. I slid my hips up, letting his head press against my opening. “I like that I’m your apprentice, even when you’re gasping for me. Tell me more about how you feel right now, Kylo.”

“Oh-- fuck-- little one, I’m-- I’m weak for you,” he murmured helplessly, his chest quivering as he sucked in air and strained against the bonds of the Force I’d laid over him. “I’m  _ so _ fucking hard-- I can’t stop thinking about your face when you cum-- please-- fuck!” 

“My face? What’s it look like?” I was actually curious about that. I mean, how many of us have ever seen our own O-face? But it seemed like a wonderful thing to make him wax poetic about while I slowly pushed down onto his cock and he jerked in vain to try and get in deeper.

“Like-- shit!-- like you’ve met the Maker. Like you’re-- fuck--  _ please-- _ like you’re one with the Force, like you’re so-- so  _ fucking--  _ enraptured-- Aeon-- please!” His cock was flooded with blood from the tie, and now I was sinking down fully onto its length, electrifying every nerve in it. I could feel his blinding, desperate pleasure in my bones, and I took a huge breath to let it flow through me. “Oh, fuck!” He was snarling like a caged animal, a ravenous hound, caught in an intense desire to fuck me into the next week that he couldn’t execute. 

I started rocking my hips, and his body shook before it tensed. His breaths began coming fast and hard. My hand was still on his face, and I moved it through his hair and down his neck before I pushed forward and braced myself by gripping his thighs. Bending over, giving him a view I knew would be pure torture while that string was still tied around him, I moaned as I bounced on his length. My guts started to tighten, the pressure against my g-spot piling up incredibly fast. 

“Mmm you-- fuck-- you make me so  _ wet--  _ when you talk like that,” I said, looking back at him and feeling myself clench when I saw his face. He was panting, mouth agape, flushed red and his eyes were starting to roll. “God, you look so perfect--”

“FUCK!” he cried, and I could feel the massive orgasm that was slowly flushing his whole body red with how badly it needed to escape. It was a special kind of torment, I knew. 

“What’s wrong, big boy?” I teased him, hips still working.

“I need to cum! Fuck!  _ Please! _ ” 

“And who’d make you do a thing like that?” 

“Please, little one, you--  _ you _ make me-- cum-- only you--” He was fast losing his words, and I was starting to clench and unclench with more and more ferocity. My hand flew down to my clit, rubbing it languidly at first since I knew I was close. I turned to look back at him.

“Look at me,” I commanded, and his glassy eyes snapped up to me instantly. “I’m gonna cum on your perfect cock, and then I’m gonna consider--  _ consider-- _ letting you cum inside me. Do you understand, Kylo?” 

“Yes, little one, anything you want,” he whimpered, and I could see a vein in his neck as he strained. 

“Very good.” Now my hand on my clit moved faster, and the edge came roaring up in record time as my whole body lit up. I cried out, eyes rolling as I clamped down and my second orgasm slammed into and out of me. I pulled up my hips enough for Kylo to watch me cum all over his purple cock, and he groaned weakly. My leg muscles were shaking, but I managed to push myself up enough to turn around, to face him as he lay there hunched against the rock, a sweaty, quivering mess. He stared up at me, watched me take to my knees over his cock once more. 

“Aeon,” he bleated. “Please.” 

“Oh, you pitiful thing,” I crooned, reaching up to stroke his cheek gently. “Look how much you need to cum. You’re so sweet and devastated.” 

“ _ Please. _ ” 

“I know, love,” I assured him, sinking down onto his cock once more. “I know what you need. I know you’ll beg for it.” 

“I’ve-- I’m begging-- I’ve begged  _ so _ much--”

“And you’ll beg again,” I warned him, stilling my hips. He whined. 

“Please, my perfect, beautiful little thing. Please take it off.  _ Please _ let me cum inside you,” he burbled, and I saw actual tears fill his eyes. “Please.  _ Please. _ I-- I can’t take it--”

“Shhhh.” I took his face in my hands and started to move against him, feeling him inside me. “I will, my big, lovely boy. My handsome, romantic, powerful creature. My Master, my lover, my Kylo.” 

I saw his eyes melt, a look like he’d just fallen in love all over again coming over his face.

“Aeon,” he barely murmured, enraptured, a tear escaping down his cheek. I sat back, and with most of him still inside me I gently pulled at the bow of the string around the base of him. As it fell away, I raised up a little more, sat back on his legs, and reached my hand down to stroke him hard with his head still inside me. I’ve never in my life seen his entire body shake like that; he was almost convulsing as he let out ragged moans and cries and nearly shouted. I kept my pressure firm and constant as he finally came. He gasped and his hips barely rutted up, still held by my invisible restraints. When he fell limp, I gently tugged him out of me, letting his seed begin to pool at my entrance. 

“Kylo,” I cooed, reaching up to take his chin in my hand. His eyes were unfocused, his face red and flushed, but he tried to look at me. “You made a mess, my love. You have to clean it up.” I watched him shudder once more as I stood and brought my cunt up to his mouth. His head lolled, barely lucid as he licked between my folds. It was intoxicating, watching his eyes slide shut while I held him by his black tresses and made him eat his own cum out of me.  _ My power level is way over 9000 right now. _ I’d let loose my Force bonds, but he didn’t seem to notice. His tongue massaged my opening, slipped up inside me and lapped against my g-spot as if on instinct. I moaned as a pang of pleasure rattled me, leaning my knees on the rock. He could only half breathe, but he was eating like he was starving.

“Mmmmmm,” he groaned into my flesh, and I clenched at the sensation. I stared down at him, transfixed on the way his head hung like he couldn’t summon the strength to hold it upright even as the muscles of his jaw and mouth worked mercilessly. He wrapped his lips around my clit, tongue stroking it. Part of me wanted to tell him that he’d already earned his keep, eating me out like this before, but holy shit. 

“Oh my God,” I breathed, my inner thigh muscles starting to shiver as my nerves lit up in waves. His hand was suddenly holding my ass cheek, and then the other plunged two fingers into my cunt and curled them against my g-spot. “FUCK!” I yelped in surprise. “Fucking-- shit! Kylo!” If this was his brand of brattiness, surprising me with some seriously dedicated head when he was supposed to be a puddle of post-coital jello, then I was fine with it. He seemed determined to have the last word (well, to induce the last orgasm, I guess). His hand worked hard and quick, his mouth relentless, and I felt like I tripped right over the edge without even realizing how close I was. I shuddered and went stiff, a ragged howl escaping me as he worked me through one more climax, cum dribbling down his chin. 

I nearly collapsed, but his hands came around my waist as I staggered backwards. He towed me down right on top of him, sliding himself off the rock and down flat into the grass. I was splayed over his massive torso with my legs lolling out around him, still shaking. His breaths were huge and even, and mine labored to catch up. We laid there in the sunlight, his hand on my back and the other in my wild tufts of hair. 

“Maker,” he mumbled eventually. “What did you do to me?”

“Hmm,” I replied. “My best.” He snorted. 

“I’ll say.” He stroked my back gently. “I had to get you back.”

“I know.” I smirked against his skin. “You’re a brat, too.”

“Well, little one, I can hardly help myself,” he said, tone coy.

“Hush,” I teased, reaching up to boop his nose. He laughed. 

“I’ve never been so tired.” He looked down at me with tender eyes and a sweet smile.

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

“Perhaps I’ve never been this happy to be this tired, then.” 

“That sounds more like it.” I smiled back at him. “We can’t fall asleep here, though. I’m not getting a sunburn on my ass.” 

“No, you must protect such valuable resources,” he snickered, the hand on my back sliding down to grip one of my glutes.  _ Wow, listen to this fucking sense of humor all of a sudden! _

“You’re in rare form after getting topped all to fucking hell, Kylo.”

“Mmm, well. It was certainly something.”

“You were  _ crying _ for me. I saw the tears!”

“And I’ll do it again,” he replied, drawing me up further along his chest and closer to his face with his incredible strength. His mouth was almost against mine. “As you will for me, little thing.” 

“Fuck--” But he cut me off by kissing me, and I moaned into it. It’s genuinely fucked up how he can turn me on like that, and at a time like that, too! I was woozy, totally drunk in his arms without a drop of alcohol. We laid there for a while, kissing, his mouth wandering over my neck and collarbone before I pushed myself onto my elbows on his chest. He looked up at me with honeyed eyes, full of his unique brand of romantic intensity. 

“I love you so completely,” he breathed. My heart did a flip.

“I know,” I replied, voice soft. “I love you back. Also, you’re so disgustingly sweet it actually blows my mind.” 

“And you’re so mercilessly filthy it blew mine, so I guess we’re even.” Now he was smirking.  _ Ohmigod he’s so strangely energized and silly and fucking romantic right now! Somebody really needed to turn loose of control… _

“I told you before. I learned from the best.” I returned his smirk. “But don’t get me started. We need to eat and talk to Rey and get some actual sleep before whatever’s about to happen.” 

“I was about to suggest that we get dressed before I fuck you again, right here,” he said, raising a brow. 

“That’s not helpful,” I groaned. “That just makes me wanna let you do it. ‘Cept if Rey comes up here looking for us and sees, I will never let you live it down.” 

“Let her see,” Kylo growled. He was almost more annoyed about Rey than he was trying to be sexy and dominant. 

“Oh, a little resentment still there, huh?” I wasn’t about to let him get away with it, of course.

“Perhaps.” He rolled his eyes. “A very little. Just at the idea of her interrupting us, I think.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” I was teasing him, but I shook my head and decided not to continue. I wasn’t actually jealous, not anymore, but maybe he wasn’t actually that bothered either. “I know what you mean.”

“Let’s go, little one,” he cooed, lingering resentment forgotten as quickly as it had arisen. We hauled ourselves up and gathered our clothes, pulling them back on and laughing in the sunshine. We walked hand in hand back over the grassy knolls towards the village, the sun slowly sliding towards the ocean as we went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had to complete the scene i suggested at the end of the last chapter before we zoom off into the Plot, i couldn't help it. i know that for Kylo, letting someone else take control is a big step in accepting vulnerability and i wanted to write something very hot and sweet and let Aeon have a little fun lol. tbh the smut in this fic is important to me as i want to depict the ways it mirrors our inner worlds, how our subconscious affects our relationships even to the level of physical contact. i wanted to make the smut as much a part of the character development as the not-smut. i hope y'all find it both hot and at least a liiiittle meaningful lol. 
> 
> buckle up for the next chapter, i'm excited to kick off Aeon's version of the third act of RoS! :D <3


	79. Chapter 79

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh fuck here we go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are RoS spoilers ofc.

Inside the shuttle we’d taken to Ahch-To days ago, I sat in the co-pilot’s seat with Kylo beside me. Rey was in the back in the tiny cargo hold, and I could almost hear the gears turning in her head. I could also definitely feel the anxiety and trepidation pouring off her, but there was an equal amount of sheer stubbornness that I related to and respected, too. 

“You think this is gonna work?” I asked Kylo quietly, looking nervously over at him as the white streaks of hyperspace blew by. 

“It has to, Aeon,” he said. “We have to succeed.” 

“Fair enough.” Sometimes, his incredibly direct way of looking at things really got on my nerves. But this time around, frankly, he was right. Like, this was it. This was the big fuckin’ deal. Redemption arcs attained or not, this was what was happening. And we  _ did _ have to succeed. 

“You’re brave, little one,” he told me softly, reaching out to cover my hand on the arm rest with his own. “I’ll be with you no matter what.” I smiled, just a little. 

“I know you will.” I looked at his eyes, which were sincere and sweet despite being a little hardened in the face of, like, certain fucking doom. “Kylo… what happened down there in the cave?” I asked, realizing that I’d still not heard the story and wondering if he’d tell me before he never got another chance. He looked surprised that I’d asked.

“I saw myself scaling a cliff,” he began. “It was easy, at first. But the higher I got, the more the surface of it was unreliable under my hands and feet. I nearly fell, many times.” I nodded, totally engrossed.  _ That metaphor is pretty fuckin’ clear. _ “The last time, I managed to swing into an opening in the cliff wall I didn't know was there. I started to travel away from my body, back into my past. Back to when I was first studying under Snoke.”

“Oh wow.” It was the first time he’d said his old master’s name since I’d even met him. 

“It wasn’t a very pleasant memory,” he admitted, glancing away from me for a moment. “His training was brutal, and it pushed the worst parts of me forward. Made them bigger and angrier. This time, he was running a drill. It was simple. I was to deflect incoming shots from a targeting droid.” He sighed, looking back at me. “But he was talking the whole time about Vader. About how strong he was, how ruthless and powerful. How if I wanted to be like him, I would have to cut out my heart, all these feelings I held onto.” 

“Sounds about right,” I murmured. 

“I still don’t know what his real purpose was in saying those things. But it seemed pretty obvious at the time that he meant I should cut myself off from Matt and Ben.” Now his face was hard to read, full of a cauldron of emotions. But the one that leapt out at me was… guilt. 

“I’m sure it was tempting.” I mean, cut out the only things you love so you can be consumed by hate and anger? Does that remind y’all of anybody? His eyes flashed up to mine, and seemed almost surprised. 

“It was,” he said. “I… I expected you to find that despicable. That I really did think about doing it.” 

“Oh, once you have nothing left to lose you’re the most dangerous. And, the most focused on your goal. Which I reckon would’ve been Snoke’s goals, since he was the boss anyway.” It made total sense that he would push Kylo towards that, honestly. 

“He might’ve just been pushing my emotions way out of proportion, piling on guilt and shame and anger to fuel my already volatile state,” he added. “Or perhaps he was saying just the right thing to encourage either to happen. Because either way, he would win. He would have what he wanted.”

“That would be my guess, actually,” I said, nodding again. “He was quite a subtle asshole, that dude.” 

“You seem well acquainted with his persona,” Kylo murmured, raising a brow at me. 

“I’m acquainted with a lotta shit, although the theory and the practice of them have turned out to be surprisingly different. Still, I know some of Snoke’s story.”  _ Not all of it, but who’s asking? Even the writers didn’t know it all! _

“Well. That memory flooded me. I fought the anger it made me feel, because looking back at it I understood what was being done. I understood my reaction. But I got stuck there, stuck in that memory even when I wasn’t angry anymore, and I felt like I was supposed to take another step past it. That’s why I told you I felt the journey wasn’t done yet.” He looked me in the eye again, expression brighter than before. “And then you helped me heal my crystal.” 

“Yeah.” I smiled softly at him, and squeezed his hand. “Thanks for telling me. I just wondered.” 

“Most people wouldn’t wonder about that.”

“Well, you know I’m about zero percent most people.” I grinned. 

“Less, even,” he replied, grinning back. He tugged me closer to him, so I turned my chair and leaned forward a little. He placed the gentlest, sweetest kiss on my lips. Not a long one, not meant to communicate anything but love. My cheeks flushed as he pulled away. Not because of the kiss itself, but because I heard Rey’s boots coming up towards the cockpit. 

“Honestly, you two,” she teased. “Get a room.” I opened my mouth to retort, but suddenly Kylo was tugging me out of my chair towards him. I landed on his lap, his arms around my waist. He leaned his face into my shoulder, one visible eye on Rey. 

“Have a seat,” he told her, voice quiet and unmistakably bratty. I could feel the smirk on his face.  _ It’s almost like he’s daring anyone to ask him to stop being disgustingly cute to me. How the tables have fucking turned! _ Rey was half frowning and half grinning, like she couldn’t commit to either enjoying his attitude or being annoyed by it. She sat, though, and looked out the viewport. 

“How close are we?” she asked.

“About fifteen minutes,” Kylo replied, glancing at the navigational computer where the little pyramid was spinning. 

“You ready?” I asked her, ironic considering how I had been feeling. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she murmured. I nodded in full solidarity. 

“We’ll need to move as quickly as we can, once we reach the surface,” Kylo said. “The sooner we get to him, the less time he’ll have to retaliate.” 

“You’ve never been down there, right?” I asked him. 

“No.”

“So we’re trying to move fast but we’re going in blind, basically?” 

“Yes.”

“Ah.” I looked back out the viewport, rubbing my forehead for a moment.  _ Yikes. _

“Sure wish Luke was with us,” Rey said quietly. “He’s faced the Emperor before.”

“It was Vader who killed him,” I reminded her.

“I’d still feel better if he was there.” 

“Well, fair enough. I would, too.” 

“He’s with us,” Kylo said, stroking my belly. “Just like the rest.”

“The rest of who?” Rey asked, looking quizzically at him. 

“The Jedi.” Kylo’s face was almost serene. I looked back at him and smiled. 

“I guess, dark and light aside, those are the guys we want at our backs,” I mused, mostly just happy that Kylo was so resonant with faith. That was reassuring. 

“I guess so.” Rey was pensive, but she seemed a little less tense, too. 

“Are we set to go? I mean, do we need anything but our sabers and our guts, down there?” I asked, fretting one last time over the details. 

“No, little one, I think those are the only things we need.” Kylo held me a little tighter to him. I sighed. 

“Alright, then.” 

When the shuttle dropped out of hyperspace, it did so inside of an enormous gaseous cloud. I nearly leapt off Kylo’s lap as he grabbed the controls, following the beeping of the navicomputer and dragging us through the turbulence. I was too dizzy, as my usual brand of space-anxiety came right the fuck back up, to shout anything clever as I clung to his seat. Very suddenly the cloud became less dense, and I almost sighed in relief as we approached what I assumed would be the surface of the planet. 

Except what we saw wasn’t the surface. It was  _ dozens _ of fucking Star Destroyers. 

“SHIT!” I think we all three exclaimed in unison as Kylo skidded up away from the nearest one before we could careen into it and die in a horrible explosion. 

“This is NOT good!” I added, gripping their two chairs and refusing to sit down despite the rough ride as my eyes locked out the window and continued to absorb more and more fucking spaceships. 

“It certainly isn’t!” Rey agreed, also staring and gripping the panel in front of her. 

“We can still make it to the surface,” Kylo said, and sure enough he was weaving between the ships. They were massive and dark, like nobody was inside them, and there was a faint blue flicker around them which made them feel vaguely unreal, like holograms or something. 

“Is that a good idea?” Rey asked, head whipping around to stare at him. 

“No! It’s not!” I answered for him.

“Why not?” Kylo asked. “If we kill Palpatine, these ships go nowhere!”

“Unless there’s a second in command, or several, who are loyal to his cause!” I pointed out. “We might need to fall back and regroup!”

“If we bring the First Order here--”

“Kylo, we don’t have time to mount a sneak attack and THEN come back with reinforcements!” Rey interrupted even as we flew past another ship. “There are dozens, maybe hundreds of these! We have to bring all of our offense down at once!”

“I can call the First Order now, at my command they’ll come!” he insisted.

“Can you transmit the navigation coordinates to them?” Rey asked.

“Yes!” 

“More than that,” I interjected, “do you trust them?” My eyes speared his, glittering with my own personal massive fucking doubt. They caught his, which were hard and intent with a little of the old Supreme Leader routine back in them. But he seemed uncertain. 

“If you don’t trust them,” Rey said, “Then we’d better be sure you’re there leading them yourself. And I should let Finn and Poe know where we’re going.”

“They still trying to round up allies?” I asked her.

“Yes.” Her frown was dark. “So far, no luck.” 

“Shit.”

“We could return to the Supremacy with you as our prisoner,” Kylo suggested, looking at Rey. I noticed that he was no longer plunging between the ships towards the surface, which was still barely visible. Rey was about to protest, of course, but he cut her off. “It’s the only way to keep suspicion low as to why you’re there with us.”

“Aren’t you in charge, now?” she asked, eyeing him. 

“We had one attempt at a mutiny,” I told her. “We shouldn’t risk another one.” Her eyebrows lifted in realization. Without warning, the communicator in Kylo’s pocket started to buzz. 

“Supreme Leader!” came a voice, high and almost… familiar? The static was cutting it in and out, though, so I wasn’t sure. “Supreme-- ent Apprentice!-- entice!-- Aeon! Aeon, can you hear me?” My eyes flew open, and I reached down without bothering to ask and pulled the little metal tube out of his pants. I could feel both their eyes on me. 

“Who is this?” I asked into it, straining to hear the response. 

“Aeon! It-- fy! Don’t-- the ship, there’s-- need you-- control!” 

“I can’t hear you!” I shouted, frustration building.  _ What the fuck are they saying?? _ Kylo was taking us at a clip out of the lower atmosphere and back up into the stormclouds. “Your signal’s bad! Speak up!”

“It’s Duffy!” came the voice, and my eyes flew wide open. “You need to come back--” But the rest was cut off in a huge wave of static.

“We’re on the way!” The thing was spitting, so I just threw that in there in the vague hope that it would be heard. Once we were in hyperspace, communicators were a no-go at distance. In that instant, of course, the hyperdrive kicked in and the gut-wrenching turbulence of moving through the air above Exegol was gone. I sagged to my knees, leaning against Rey’s chair as I handed the communicator back to Kylo. He took it, eyes locked on me. 

“What was that?” he asked.

“It was Mitaka.” I rubbed my forehead. “I think he said we needed to go back to the  _ Supremacy. _ I assume that’s where we’re heading?” 

“It is.” Kylo seemed concerned. “Why do you think he was trying to reach you specifically? He sounded very urgent.” 

“I dunno,” I sighed. “I wish I knew. I guess we’re gonna find out.” I let the cockpit fall silent, tense, and very, very uncertain what the hell was going on. 

\-----

When the hatch of the shuttle opened, Kylo and I stormed out with Rey marching behind us in a pair of cuffs. She looked extremely unhappy about it, but that was fine with me as her looking cheerful would’ve been much more suspicious. The docking bay personnel all froze and watched us pass, Kylo back fully into Supreme Leader mode out of sheer stress I think. Despite his extremely not-impressive clothing, his presence was still huge and dark. My resting bitch face was in full flower, since I was also feeling pretty on edge.

“Lieutenant General Mitaka,” I said into my communicator as we marched through the corridors of the massive ship and made straight for the prison level. “Report to cell block 1793 immediately.” It was time we had that chat I’d promised. Maybe past it, but whatever. 

When we arrived at the cell Rey was meant to stay in for just as long as necessary, Kylo opened the door and looked at her gravely. 

“We’ll be monitoring you,” he told her. “Contact me if anything happens that’s not supposed to, alright?” She nodded, face taut but since there were no guards or other staff around she seemed less tense. Kylo reached down and took her cuffs off. “Ideally you won’t be here longer than a night. Less, if we can help it, or if your friends find the help we need faster than expected.” 

“If they contact you, please let me know,” she said. We both nodded at her, and she turned to enter the cell very reluctantly. At least this one has a window and isn’t just a gray box, I thought. Right as the door slid shut, I heard a familiar pair of footsteps down the hall.

“Aeon!” called Mitaka as he rounded the corner and shuffled towards us. “Ren! Why did you come back?” 

“You  _ told _ us to,” I said, confused and now more than a little worried. 

“I was trying to warn you  _ not _ to, not yet at least!”

“Wait, what?”

“Why?” Kylo demanded.

“Because I’m not certain, but I think Pryde intends to move the fleet without your approval, and I fear another mutiny,” the Lieutenant confided in a very low voice. “I don’t know for sure, though. Being as he hasn’t tried to capture you yet, I could be wrong, but my gut says not to rest easy.” 

“I’m going to the bridge to give my orders,” Kylo informed us both, brow dark. “I am still the Supreme Leader of the First Order.” 

“You’d better hurry,” Mitaka said. “Since you’re here now, Pryde might try something if you take much longer.” True to form, Kylo simply began to stride purposefully back the way we’d come. 

“You will find me as soon as you’re done here, apprentice,” he called, not turning to look back at me. I watched him go, saber at his side and anger just beneath the surface of his composure. Then I looked back at Mitaka, who was making a very, very concerned face. 

“What in the name of the Maker have you been up to, ducky?” he asked earnestly. “Being gone this long during such a time of turmoil--”

“I know, I know,” I cut him off, waving my hands. “But we had to. Duffy, there’s an entire fucking armada of ships on Exegol. They’re just sitting there, waiting to be launched, and fuck knows what kind of firepower they have but even if it’s standard Star Destroyer fare it’s more than anyone in the Galaxy can handle. Maybe even the First Order.”

“Oh dear,” he murmured, brow wrinkling even more than it already was. “Oh dear, oh dear. Do you have a plan?” 

“We’re going to gather the entire fleet and go to Exegol and blow the motherfuckers up before they can go anywhere. Then we’re going to the surface to find Palpatine, since I doubt we can blow him up from the surface. Like, if I was that guy, I’d be as hard to get to as possible.” 

“It’ll take some hours to get the entire fleet in one place,” he pointed out. “Why not have them all meet you there?” 

“Because Kylo doesn't trust them, and neither do I. And, everything you just said about General Pryde just reaffirms that we shouldn’t,” I said, frowning. 

“Well, yes.” He still didn’t look pleased. “But it’s adding to your time, ducky, and I fear you haven’t got much to begin with. I’ve been trying to learn all I can, but Pryde lets almost none of his subordinates know his intentions until they’re being given as orders and he communicates quite often with Maker knows whom in one of the communication rooms. Alone.” 

“Shit,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “I did not like that guy and I guess there was a good reason.” 

“Yes, well. He’s not very likable.” The little man was trying to offer me a humorless grin, but he could only half manage the grin. The hurmorlessness, though, he had in spades. I sighed. 

“This is Rey, by the way,” I told him, nodding my head to the side where the door to Rey’s cell was. She was definitely looking out the window and listening intently, and when his head turned to look at her she ducked almost comically. “You know of her, obviously.”

“So you finally managed to catch her, huh?” 

“Actually, Duff,” I began, and my guts churned suddenly. _Fuck I hope I really can trust him._ “She came willingly. We need her to help us get rid of Palpatine.” 

“Willingly?” His eyes flew wide open and stared at me. “Isn’t she with the Resistance?” 

“Have you ever known me to take sides?” I asked him, raising an eyebrow. “You know how I feel about this place.” 

“Fair enough. You’ve been blunt even with Ren about that.” Now his gaze shifted between me and Rey, whose head had reappeared and was looking out with obvious anxiety. There was no glass in the window. She could hear everything we were saying, but she kept her own mouth shut. Which was mildly out of character, I thought, but we were officially in a sneaking situation and she wasn’t as used to those as just pointedly throwing barbs at Kylo and refusing to cooperate with pretty much anything. 

“We need her,” I said. “Without her we stand much worse of a chance dealing with Palpatine. Even if he’s half a corpse, he’s a fucking Sith lord. It ain’t a joke.” 

“I assume you brought her here to avoid ruffling feathers?” he asked, raising a brow at me.

“Yeah, pretty much. Which was an even better call than I thought.” I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder. “Dopheld, will you promise me something?” His eyes found me, small and a little frightened at what I might ask.

“What?” 

“If we can’t release her as we plan to, will you help make sure she gets out? Even if shit hits the fan here, we’re all three going to Exegol. If we don’t, everyone in this galaxy is screwed.” Holding his gaze, I awaited my answer. It didn’t take as long as I expected. 

“Of course, ducky,” he said, nodding. “I think we’re beyond taking sides, now. Or, I am, at least. As long as Palpatine’s out there, things are going to get worse. And I want to live long enough to marry my boyfriend.” He sighed, and I grinned in spite of myself. 

“You’re gonna marry him?” I asked, just a little delighted. 

“I haven’t asked yet!” he hissed, putting his finger up in front of his mouth in a hushing motion. “But I want to. Except it’s been fucking madness around here, so it’s very far on the back burner.” I just hugged him, giggling and giving him a squeeze. I felt his arms come around to pat my back as he got over the surprise embrace. 

“See, another reason we gotta kill that dude,” I said, pulling back and smiling. 

“Rather.” But he was smiling a little. “You ought to go up to the bridge and find Ren, ducky. I’ll go up later. Is there anything you need me to do?” 

“Just make sure Rey has food and water, please. And thank you.” 

“For what?” 

“Being my friend,” I said, very sincerely. 

“The last time you said that, you nearly died,” he pointed out. “Please don’t make it a habit!” I laughed in spite of myself, and started walking back down the hall. 

“I won’t!” I called, waving at him. I saw him nod at me before I turned and took off at a clip for the bridge, seeking the thread of the Force that connected me and Kylo always. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the return of Duffy!! who is a true homie, bless him!!


	80. Chapter 80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt fortifies me in so many ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is some really fluffy smut in this chapter.

I was freshly showered for the first time in a long time, which frankly was both really nice and also felt weirdly useless in light of how many problems were right there in front of my face but also in the shadows, just present enough to make me anxious as fucking hell. Sitting in my soft clothes on the edge of the bed with my head resting on my fists, I sighed for the thirty billionth time as a bunch of fairly useless thoughts paraded through my head. Kylo was in the shower still, and I heard the water stop. 

When his footsteps came out of the bathroom door behind me, I felt the Force twist a little, like it was suddenly flowing from another source. Of course, I knew what that meant. 

“Hey Aeon,” said a sweet voice, and I turned to see Matt standing there with his towel wrapped around him. “Um, what am I doing?” 

“Right now? Just showering,” I chuckled. “Kylo left you a note.” 

“Oh,” he murmured, blushing and going to pick up their datapad from the bedside table. His eyes ran over it swiftly, then looked up at me. “So, we’re going there, huh?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, getting up to walk over to him. Despite his black hair, his presence in the body was so soothing and genuine that I wanted nothing more than to touch him. “It’s that time.” 

“I wish I knew how to help,” he said, looking guilty. I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing myself close to him. 

“You’ve already helped so much, and I know if you come out down there, you’ll be even more help then,” I assured him.

“I know, hun, but I worry about you.” He smiled his goofy, charming smile as his hands came to either side of my face. “Do I get to spend tonight with you before you go, then?” 

“If you want to.” I beamed at him. “I would love that.” I didn’t bother to mention that I had no idea if we’d even get time to sleep as I was madly on edge waiting to hear about the fleet, or the Resistance, or some form of sabotage, or literally anything. Oof. 

“Yeah, I’d love it too.” He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine in a way that reminded me of his slow, tender kisses from when we’d started getting involved. I felt myself tremble a little, the memory of his ardent sweetness washing over me. Cradling my face in his hands, he kissed a little harder, eased my teeth open to slide his tongue against mine. Now I shuddered, a pang of lust rippling through me.

“Matt,” I murmured as he just barely pulled away. 

“I want to go with you. Traveling. Kylo says that if you stay, that’s what we’re gonna do for a while,” he said softly, pressing his forehead against mine. “After seeing your face on Kaller that one time, I’d give anything to see what you think of everywhere else.” 

Memories of the streets of Plateau City flooded me, of holding Matt’s hand as we wandered from stall to stall and tasted food, tried out clothes, and he resisted the urge to buy a speeder. His terrified blush in the jeweler’s shop, on the heels of his admiring smile. The huge grin on his face every time I saw something I’d never imagined seeing before. I decided not to engage with the part of me that feared it would never happen again, at that moment.  _ No. Fuck you. Even if it doesn’t, I’m still allowed to want it. I can deal with my own heartbreak later. _

“You wanna come with me down to other planets?” I asked, smiling.

“Kylo likes the quiet places. I like the loud ones.” He grinned. “You have someone for every kind of spot in the galaxy.” 

“I wonder what Ben likes,” I replied, laughing. “Oh, Matt. I would love to see the loud places with you. You make me feel so quiet and happy inside.” 

“I know the feeling.” He nuzzled our noses. “You still owe me a date in our red dresses, anyway, remember?” I laughed.

“Yes!” My heart was pounding with elation, refusing once again to acknowledge openly that we might all just die in a giant Force-fireball poofed out by a dead Emperor. Or whatever the fuck else. My love just wouldn't die, couldn’t be hidden in the face of what might happen. I felt like a new person, washed in the joy of feeling at home despite having no home, of connecting with other people, of not being--

“Aeon?” Matt’s voice came to me through the realization that I’d been thinking about all this, and I’d fallen totally still. “You alright?”

“Matt,” I whispered. “I’m… I’m not-- I haven’t seen anything in weeks. Nothing that felt not-real. Everything I’ve experienced, I knew it was the Force. For a long time.” I stared at him, shock rippling over me. 

_ Am I not bipolar anymore? Or is it just not the same thing, here? Now that I have the Force?  _

“You mean like, nothing scary or unreal? Like Phasma, or the demon?”

“No.”

“Well… isn’t that good news?” he asked, brow knitting. 

“It… yeah, I mean, I guess it is.” I blinked at him. I’d never considered this, not the whole time I’d been here, despite knowing that my psychosis and the Force could be connected. The Force was much like symptoms, in that sometimes I could use them to my advantage and sometimes it was a terrifying mess (witness: the scary seaweed butthole.) But it had just dawned on me that I didn’t feel… crazy, anymore. Not that crazy is a bad thing, but that intense fear I’d always had that I would be too unusual, too much, too bizarre… it was gone.

“Why don’t you seem, uh, happy about it?” Matt asked, looking increasingly worried. 

“I’m not unhappy,” I assured him. “I’m just… who am I, if I’m not crazy?” He blinked at me, and then he threw back his head and laughed. 

“You’re you!” he said as if that answered everything, and I couldn’t even get annoyed. He was so cute, so fucking cheerful and genuine.

“I know, but I dunno what that means!” I was smiling anyway. 

“Oh, well then let me tell you all about you,” he grinned, and he picked me up by my waist without warning. 

“Matt!” I giggled, hands on his shoulders. 

“You,” he began, “Are the most fearless and compassionate person I’ve ever met! You love--  _ love-- _ looking at planets from space. You have the most beautiful singing voice. You ask for-- no, you  _ demand _ respect.” Now he was spinning me around, and I couldn’t stop laughing. “You don’t give up when you really care. You love so fiercely. You protect so powerfully. And you’re so funny!”

“Ohmigod,” I said, wriggling in his grip. He stopped turning and dropped me before catching me under my arms and knees, and I shrieked and laughed again.

“You have visions that are important because you’re strong with the Force, and you communicate with it better than anyone I’ve ever met. You listen to people. You lose your temper but you try not to. You have a wonderful imagination. You’re a warrior! Not just with your saber, but with your mind and your feelings. You’re so honest it makes everyone else feel safer being honest, too. You, Aeon, are a very special creature.” He was holding me, swinging me around, but at this last he stopped and looked into my eyes with purpose. 

“You think so?” I asked quietly.  _ Wow, that was NOT a thank-you, zero points! _

“I know so. I’ve seen it. Kylo and Ben and I’m pretty sure everybody else who ever met you would agree.” 

“Thank you.”  _ There ya go.  _

“If you ever need a reminder to be what you are, fierce one, I’m always here.” His smile made my heart flutter. He was so confident, tossing me around like that, and still so joyful and pure like he’d always been. I beamed at him. 

“And the same to you, sweetest thing,” I told him. 

“I know we should rest,” he said, “but… I can't take my eyes off you.”  _ Oh wow. _

“I know that feeling,” I replied, acutely aware of my own stare. His face was so sweet, his posture so artless. I wrapped my arms around his neck. “We’re moving towards Exegol tomorrow, as soon as we can. I’m terrified I won’t even be able to sleep.”

“Why be afraid of that?” he asked softly, and he looked at me through his eyebrows just a little. My nethers lit up pretty much instantly. 

“Oh...” I breathed.  _ Well dang. _

“It’s not easy to sleep before something big. We’re better off--” he put me down, bending close so my hands stayed in his hair-- “doing something else, and hoping sleep comes after.” 

“I, uh, I’m taking suggestions.” I stared up at him, feeling the heartbeat of the Force picking up between us. His hands took my hips, then moved up my waist under my shirt and over my ribs. Their touch was intent, not light or passing. 

“I have a few,” he cooed, and his thumb grazed one of my nipples. I sucked in a breath.

“Fuck, Matt,” I hissed. “You’re so hot when you’re like this…”

“You’re hot all the time,” he murmured, leaning towards me and pressing his lips against my neck. As his tongue came out to lave over my skin, I gasped.

“I mean… so are you… just… fuck,” He was suckling at a nerve, sending fire through me. “It surprises me-- hnn-- when you--  _ ohmigod. _ ” Now both of his thumbs were rubbing my nipples, his mouth wandering to some other sensitive place. I was turning rapidly into jello, melting in his arms.  _ Jesus, who woulda thunk Matt would get so sure of himself! I mean, I hoped so, but WOW. _

“Aeon,” he breathed against my skin. “I want to fuck you.”

What is it about those words that just… never fails to do the trick? Turns out people really like the direct approach. 

“Oh, I want you to fuck me so bad,” I said, breath catching as his thumbs kept working. He proceeded to pull my shirt off over my head, then captured my mouth in another, much more urgent kiss as he maneuvered me towards the bed. When my hands fumbled with the towel wrapped around his waist, he pulled it off himself and wrapped his huge hand under my jaw. Pressing up on it instead of against my windpipe, he tugged my bottom lip between his teeth as he pulled away from me. My eyes rolled almost involuntarily. 

“This doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asked, moving my head around with his grip easily. 

“God, no.”  _ It makes me feel like you COULD break me, but you won’t, and I fucking love it. _

“Good.” He pushed me back and down, and I took one knee and then the other until his arousal was in front of my face. Turning loose, he put his hands through my short, messy hair. I stared up at him through my eyebrows, smirking a little. 

“Do you want me to worship your cock, beautiful Matt?” I asked, playing coy. His nostrils flared.

“Yes.” 

“Good.” I ran my tongue along it from base to tip before taking his length into my mouth. He groaned as his head hit the back of my throat, and I almost gagged. But I didn’t care much, as he was pulling my hair, which as we know I fucking love. Electricity shot through me and I hummed as I started bobbing my head up and down. 

“Maker,” he breathed, hips starting to rut in time with me. But he stalled them after a moment or two, and maneuvered me onto the bed. “Turn around,” he murmured into my ear, and the anticipation alone had me so wet. I bent over onto my hands and knees, and without fanfare he tugged my pants down over my ass, pulled the cheeks apart with his hands, and buried his face. 

“Shit! Oh wow,” I muttered, shivering as his tongue pushed its soft, powerful way into my ass. He hummed, and tugged my pants all the way off under my knees while worked. I felt his fingers slide through the slick between the lips of my cunt, then swirl over my rapidly stiffening clit. I was struggling to breathe. His unoccupied hand came up and fisted my hair, pulling it again, and a moan escaped my lips. Almost immediately after, he plunged two fingers inside me and started to work them slow and hard.

“Since you like me to call you sir,” he said as he pulled his mouth away finally, “what would you like to call me?”  _ He would ask me to think of words at a time like this.  _

“Um,” I said, waves of pressure from his hand working inside me interrupting the flow of my thoughts. “Oh, fuck--  _ shit-- _ um--”

“Are you having trouble articulating, Aeon?” I could hear the little giggle in his voice. His thumb grazed my clit and I yelped. 

“I-- shit!”

“Take your time,” he cooed, slowing his movements down but not making them any less intense. I panted, my head still held by the hair, and tried to think. 

“You-- ahh-- maybe-- lady-- or-- angel--” I was trying real hard. “Your grace-- fucking-- queen-- fuck!”

“Lady…” He seemed to be turning that one over in his head. “Angel is nice too, but you call me that anyway.” His fingers were so steady and slow and deep inside me that I was starting to clench and unclench around them, and my entire core was twisting up. “But I like all of those. How about you just say whatever pretty things you like and we’ll see, hm?”

“Yes, my lady,” I replied, drawn to that one since, despite his pronoun uncertainty, there was something attractive to him about the feminine ones.

“See, that sounds so lovely already, fierce one.” His hand let go my hair and instead splayed across my back, pushing my upper body even closer to the bed while my ass got higher in the air. His thumb was still rubbing my clit, fingers digging until I was wrapped tight around them and teetering close to the edge.

“Fuuuuck,” I mewled as my muscles started to twitch.

“Are you gonna cum for me?” he purred, and then his fingers started moving faster.

“Yes! Angel, please! Please don’t stop!” 

“Oh, that’s perfect.” His voice was breathy and excited, and he picked up speed once again to send me over the edge. I went stiff and felt my orgasm burst, sending peals of pleasure out through me as I shivered and groaned. I felt him shift and rise onto his knees behind me, felt his hands both come warm and huge down over my ass and up along either side of my spine. He pushed me gently, so he could settle firmly on the bed behind me. The head of him was pressed into my inner thigh, demanding. “I love seeing you like this, Aeon. I see what Kylo’s on about.” 

“Fuck,” I gasped. He moved his hips and his cock lined up with my entrance in a way that felt natural and easy for him, now. Painfully slowly, he started to push it inside me. “Ohh my  _ God... _ ” His breaths were ragged as he tried to be patient, sliding in to the hilt and holding himself there.

“My love,” he murmured, and now he gripped my ass cheeks purposefully. “You’re so-- fuck, you feel  _ so _ good.” He drew himself out, then pushed back in hard, and I moaned. Then he did it again, slow and then sudden, slamming in deep. He kept going like that, picking up steadily until he was gripping my hips and holding me still while he rutted powerfully into me. My hands shook as I fisted the blankets in them, wailing with abandon. 

“ _ Shit! _ Matt!”

“Now, sweetness,” he growled, reaching one hand beneath me to pull me up from the waist back onto my elbows as he leaned down over me, hunching his back, hips still working. His breath was hot on my ear. “I know you give Kylo hell, but do I deserve it?” 

“No, my queen,” I breathed, melting as I started to tingle all over. “No, lovely angel-- ahh-- my gracious-- ah!-- gracious lover, my  _ beautiful _ creature--”

“Fuck,” he hissed, and his other hand came around my neck to push at my jaw, tilt my head backwards until I was propping myself up on my hands. “Those words-- are so gorgeous--”

“Fuck me, please, loveliness!” He got so excited every time I said something pretty that I couldn’t help myself. His cock was working deep within me at this angle, our bodies rippling against each other as I met his thrusts. “Your cock-- it’s-- so--  _ ahh!-- _ I love it!”

“How hard would you like me to fuck you, fierce one?” he said, voice raspy. 

“As hard as you can, please, angel!” That answer came to mind very easily. Without missing a beat he turned me loose and hoisted up my hips, holding me under them and leaning back to push his cock in absolutely as far as it would go. I saw stars, and my legs were shaking from the pressure alone. It took me a second to realize that my knees weren’t on the ground, and I was propping myself up with my hands while my legs wrapped instinctively back around his. Letting out a low, ragged noise, he began to comply with my request. That is, he started fucking me as hard as he could. 

“FUCK!” I yelped.

“Is this-- rrrgh-- what you wanted-- sweet thing?” Matt was breathing very hard, and I was skyrocketing towards the edge with no brakes. 

“Yes! Angel!  _ Shit! _ ” My reply came in one-word bursts with every other thrust, such was his speed. My eyes rolled back into my head as I started to clamp down on him. “I’m-- I’m gonna cum--!” 

“ _ Fuck! _ ” he swore as my walls turned to a vice, my body exploding with electricity and heat. My arms barely held me-- but with his strength, they barely needed to. He was groaning, hips still working, leaning even farther back as he drove into me. I could feel that he wasn’t that close yet, like his attention being on me and on the words we’d been improvising with had taken up some of the space his body needed to get worked up that fast. 

I wasn’t done shaking before he reached down and tugged me upright and back against him by the hair, which I swear to God just added and extra spasm to my climax. Instinctively I reached back to put my hand in his hair, fisting it without pulling. A pitiful sound left me at this new angle, pressure hard and even more direct against my g-spot. Then, as though he could get any hotter, he lifted my legs under the knees and started moving me in time with his hips, slow and deep. I gasped, turning my head towards his. Our mouths came close together as he pressed his forehead into mine. 

“Oh my  _ God, _ ” I whimpered, overwhelmed by his power and strength which so rarely played out this hard. I loved watching Matt crumble, but damn. This was pretty excellent, too.

“Aeon,” he breathed, his sweaty and abnormally dark har falling in curls into our faces. “You-- how do you feel?” 

“Amazing, my queen,” I said, soft and breathy and reassuring even though I wasn’t sure how much he needed reassuring. It was so like him to just want to know. 

“Why queen?” he asked, smirking a little, still moving me slow and deep on his length. My feet found his quads, and I rested them there and clung to his neck. 

“Because I’m at your command,” I cooed, “and your cock is--ahh-- so beautiful-- it only suits royalty. When-- when you take control-- hnn-- you’re so gracious--  _ so _ generous...” I heard him suck in a deep breath, like the words I was saying were hitting his heart. I felt the Force cycling through us, powerful and expansive. “Because I love you,” I added with a sigh. 

“Little love,” he murmured, and now that I was half crouching on his legs one of his hands came up to hold me back against him by the ribcage. The other snaked down between my legs and laid an easy, languid circle over my bud. I moaned into his mouth. “You’re indescribable.” Now his hips started to rut, and his hand to stroke me much quicker. 

“Oh--  _ fuck-- _ !” But he claimed my lips mid-curse and lapped against my tongue, sending huge shivers straight to my core. Everything was him, every breath and shudder and movement. I felt so small against him, held in his massive arms as he fucked me. Twisted as I was, our bodies were still entwined perfectly, our ragged breaths in sync. 

We came as one, his thrusts getting harder and harder until they stuttered and his hand moved frantically. My whole torso contracted, and I pushed out a final orgasm, falling limp into him. He breathed hard against my neck, gripping me against him as he rode out his climax. Then he moved me gently into a lying position on the bed, and curled up beside me with his head looming over to watch my eyes drift back to the present slowly. For a while all I heard was our breathing. 

But as I came drifting back, the fear that this would be the last time came with me. I swallowed, no longer able to push it away. 

“Aeon? What’s wrong?” I heard Matt ask, and I didn’t realize I was crying a little until his big hand came up to wipe a tear off my cheek. I blinked and looked up at him.

“I’m scared,” I admitted in a near-whisper.

“Oh, little bug,” he said, wrapping his arm around me to pull me into him, laying my head on his shoulder. I curled into the safety of his arms, hand wrapping around his torso. “I know. I am, too.” 

“I kept trying not to think about it,” I murmured into his shoulder. 

“It’s hard to block out something this scary.”  _ Well… to be fair, he would know all about that.  _

“Yeah.” I blinked tears out of my eyes. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, fierce thing. I have so much faith in you.” He stroked my cheek, and looked down at me with his soft brown eyes. 

“That makes one of us,” I groaned. 

“Well, Kylo and Ben do too, and I think Rey gave you her vote of confidence, so. Either we’re all wrong, or…” He was giving me a cute little half-grin. I gave one back in spite of myself. Matt always could make me smile when I didn’t even want to.

“Yeah, okay. I know what you’re saying. Try hard and believe in myself and all that shit.” He pressed his forehead into mine again. 

“Be what you are. That’s what I’m always saying, hun. You might be scared, but you’re brave as hell, too.” 

“For the first time in a long time, I’m more aware of the fear than the other thing.”

“Well, maybe that’s good. I know I’m learning that I gotta pay more attention to fear.” I pulled my face back away from his, struck by a sudden question. 

“Matt, what else happened down there in the cave? Other than when you saw me, um, you know.” _ Kill you with a lightsaber?  _ Yeah, I wasn’t about to say that out loud.

“You really wanna know?” he asked, brow knit. I nodded. “Okay, well. I saw my parents.” 

“Shit,” I muttered. 

“They were trying to reach me. They tried to tell me that it was alright, that I wasn’t a bad person and that all I needed to do was understand myself a little better.” His eyes were looking at me, but what they saw was farther away. “I didn’t listen, because I’d just seen what happened at the Academy again. Or maybe it was what happened, I dunno. I don’t always remember what I do when I fly into a rage, like that. This had more details than I remembered. They felt… wrong, somehow.” 

“Like someone else put them there?” I asked, raising a brow. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, seeing me again. “That’s exactly it. So when I saw them, I got so upset that I flew into a rage and…” He swallowed, and I felt him get nervous. 

“It’s okay,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” 

“I killed them. With Kylo’s saber.” His face was drawn, sad. “When they were dead, I turned around and you were there. After you said you were setting me free, I think Kylo came out. And then… yeah.” He didn’t want to name his furious and bizarre misstep during Kylo’s attempt to reconnect with me, either. Which was fine with me. It’s not like I’d forgotten. 

“Sounds very metaphorical,” I said, stroking his back. “I’m sure you got the message.”

“Loud and clear,” he replied, eyes sad. “I think if it was a test, I failed.” 

“I dunno if it was a test. I mean, my theory is that Palpatine was using the Force-- which we were all extra connected to, being in that place-- to try and mess with our heads.” 

“You went to the cave, too?” Matt’s eyebrows flew up. 

“Yeah,” I nodded. “The first day I was there, it drew me in. It’s where I figured out Rey’s heritage, and I think I might’ve resisted something. It felt like someone was trying to trick me into saying or doing something, I’m not sure what, something about where my power comes from. But I managed to sidestep it. I saw you and Kylo and Luke all down there, too, and Palpatine.” 

“Maker,” he murmured, eyes wide. “That makes me even more afraid I failed.” 

“I don’t know if you were tested like me. I… Maybe your parents were trying to reach you through the Force, like they reached out to Kylo when I healed him.” I was hoping so, at least. 

“Hm,” he hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe. But if they were, I rejected them, even though I wish I hadn’t.” I stroked his cheek softly. 

“It’s okay, Matt. We can figure it out,” I told him. “I just want us to survive this fuckin’ fight. If we manage that, the galaxy’s the limit.” 

“You’ll make it,” he said softly. “I promise.” 

“Oh yeah? What if I promise  _ you’ll _ make it? Whatcha gonna do then, wise guy?” I teased, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well I bet we’ll both make it, then!” he laughed. I giggled.  _ Or, I’ll die and hopefully get zapped back to Earth and you’ll go on to live your redeemed life. Who knows. _ But I didn’t say that out loud, obviously.

We laid there and chatted, because sleep was far away from me. I asked him to tell me about busy city-planets, about his favorite places in the galaxy. He had so many that I wasn’t sure any one of them counted as a favorite, he just loved them all. I listened ardently to stories of being a child on Coruscant, his brief trips to certain other core planets with his mother (and occasionally his father), and his favorite ways to travel very, very fast at each spot. It was so lovely to just watch him get excited and describe things and tell me all these details, half of which I barely comprehended, that he wanted me to see one day. My heart was full to bustin’ that night, despite my fears. I tried to remember every detail of his face, his goofy smile and uneven dimples, his bright eyes and soft laughter. You know, just in case I needed to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably the last smut in this fic y'all. so it had to be Matt and it had to be sweet. plus you get a little glimpse into his experiences in the cave, poor thing. i love him so much.


	81. Chapter 81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But you really DO gotta have friends!

I awoke to the sound of my communicator buzzing. I couldn’t have been asleep for very long, because I felt sort of terrible. I rolled over, away from Matt’s body which was beginning to stir as well, and pulled the metal tube off the bedside table. 

“Aeon!” came a voice that I recognized, quieter than usual. 

“Is that you, Duffy?” I murmured.

“Aeon, they’re coming. They’re sending nearly a legion to take you and Ren into custody.” He sounded grave, scared. I was suddenly wide awake, my body jumping directly into fight or flight. I turned to look at Matt-- but it was Kylo, his eyes glittering and sharp, his nostrils flaring. He was  _ pissed.  _

“Fuck!” I hissed.

“They’ll be there any moment. Aeon, don’t resist. Don’t fight them.” 

“Why the hell  _ not? _ ”

“Remember what you asked me down in the cell block?” I froze, thinking back.  _ Will you help make sure she gets out?  _ Immediately, I understood. 

“Thank you. We’ll need our sabers. Don’t die, please,” I replied, and turned the thing off. Kylo’s face was somewhere between confused and furious.

“Are you really going to let them take you, Aeon?” he demanded. 

“Mitaka’s gonna help us.” I was already out of bed, throwing on pants and a tank top hurriedly. Kylo followed suit, growling something about his dissatisfaction with this plan, but was only wearing pants by the time the door flew open and there were more than a dozen troopers who were armed to the teeth visible outside in the hallway. I froze, glancing over at him. They wasted no time filing in and surrounding us, pointing blasters and all manner of weapons at our heads. 

“It’s over, Ren,” said a voice, and General Pryde actually walked into the room himself. For some reason I hadn’t expected him to do his own dirty work. “You and your little apprentice can accompany me down to the prison level, or I can have half a legion converge on you at once. It’s your decision.”  _ Well, he really cuts to the chase, at least, instead of drawling on like a certain ginger. _

“I guess we know who was helping Hux now, huh?” I said, raising an eyebrow at Kylo. I gotta admit, I was mildly annoyed at myself for forgetting that the sniveling general had to have had help and that we probably needed to figure out who exactly that help was. Where the fuck had Pryde come from, anyway? Bad writing?

“If you harm my apprentice,” Kylo growled at the usurper, “I will take you with me.” 

“No harm need come to either of you if you don’t resist,” the old man replied, expression dour. He didn’t waste words trying to insult me by calling me Kylo’s whore or anything, either.  _ Okay, maybe I could get used to these old school antagonists who don’t do the macho bullshit. This is marginally less annoying. _ I crossed my arms.

“Do you find the plan to eliminate a major threat to the galaxy not to your taste, General?” I asked. 

“I rather prefer to combine our resources,” he replied, clasping his hands behind his back. “It seems a waste to do away with them out of fear.” 

“You think Palpatine’s going to share his power with you?” Kylo rebutted. 

“I would gladly serve an Emperor more fit for the post than you, boy,” Pryde growled.  _ Oh, goddammit. He was one of the generals in the original trilogy, wasn’t he? How the fuck did I forget that? _ To be fair to myself, I was too busy being psychotic and trying not to die, so that was probably why. “Now. You are my prisoners. I suppose I’ll let your replacement decide what to do with you.” Two troopers each were approaching me and Kylo, holding out cuffs. 

“He wants to keep both of us as his pets, and you know it. Or else you would’ve killed us already.” I glared as the cuffs were clamped roughly around my wrists and they sealed themselves closed with a hiss. I heard Kylo’s do the same.

“Pray he finds you both to be suitable trophies,” Pryde replied before he turned and marched out of the room. Kylo glanced at me, clearly trying to contain his wrath, and we were prodded into exiting the Supreme Leader’s suite, unarmed and Kylo only half clothed, to follow. 

“How the hell did you both get down here?” I heard Rey hiss out the window of her cell once the troopers had retreated to their post at the entryway to the cell block. Looking out my own window, I saw her head pop up across the hall. Kylo was next to her in his own cell, brooding mightily. 

“Pryde made us an offer we couldn’t refuse,” I said dryly.  _ At least the fuckin’ cuffs are off while we’re in here, _ I thought. _ I wonder how long we’ll be here before Duffy finds us a way out? _

“That’s ridiculous!” The desert girl wasn’t pleased, and was maybe panicking a little. 

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “We have help.” 

“Your friend? The First Order officer? Can you trust him, or are you sure he’s not the one who ratted you out?”

“He warned us about the ambush,” I said, eyeing her. “So pipe the fuck down and trust me. Please.” 

“I dislike this plan,” Kylo said, very unnecessarily. 

“I’d be shocked to death if you didn’t, love.” I leaned against the wall of my cell, rubbing my forehead. 

“Pryde is joining forces with Palpatine. That is the exact opposite of what we need to happen,” he pointed out, terse. 

“I’m aware.” 

“Do you think your friend can have absolutely  _ any  _ effect on that? Or is he just letting us out to face Palpatine alone?” 

“I dunno. I know he’ll do at least that much.” I sighed.  _ Fuck. This sucks big time. _

“The Resistance has no help as far as I know,” Rey said. “We’re completely alone if we go and the First Order shows up.” 

“They’ll keep trying. Have you ever known Poe Dameron to give up, even when maybe he fuckin’ should?” I pointed out. Rey’s eyebrows rolled, like she did in fact see my point even though she was annoyed by it. 

“What if they’re too late?” Kylo was looking at me, and there was the faintest tinge of fear in his black eyes. 

“If we play what-if for the next however long, we’ll all go fucking nuts. Trust me.” I implored them. I was winging it big time, and praying that maybe Mitaka would be more resourceful than just getting us outta here. But even if it was only that, I’d still be grateful basically forever. “We have to go with the flow right now. Trust the Force or whatever the fuck some sagely old Jedi would say.” Rey let out a frustrated noise and spun around to sit in her cell, her head disappearing from the window. Kylo just watched me from across the hall. I saw his emotions swirling and eddying around on his face, and I met his eyes with the full measure of my fear, as well as my determination. 

“Trust the Force. Trust each other,” Kylo said quietly. I nodded, and suddenly felt the barricade of doors between us very acutely. All I wanted was to touch him before I tried to sneak out of the fucking flagship of the First Order and probably die. That comfort of our connection was so powerful. But it wasn’t happenin’, so I didn’t let myself think about it much more. He sighed, and I did too, and we both turned and sat down on the uncomfortable benches in our cells. I shut my eyes and felt the gentle ebb and flow of the Force as it connected me to both of the other bodies nearby. Kylo was tense but trying to trust. Rey was basically the same. Really, we were all three on a level at that point in a big way. I breathed slowly, deeply. 

_ Don’t fuck it up.  _

\-----

By some miracle, it took Mitaka maybe three hours to come hurriedly down the hall. I heard footsteps, and saw both Kylo and Rey’s heads pop up as I looked out my own window. He was carrying two bags over his shoulder. 

“Alright, you lot,” he huffed as he came up to my cell and without any ado at all opened the door. He turned to open Kylo and Rey’s cells too. “Here.” Turning back, he reached out and handed me a bag. It was full of a familiar weight, and I knew it had three lightsabers in it. Rey had had her saber with her this whole time, as part of the original plan, so I knew Matt’s was in there, too. My eyes brightened. 

“Duffy!” I threw my arms around him in a hug, and this time he hugged me back ever so briefly. 

“Come with me. This is going to involve much sneaking but we have almost no time. It’s shift-change. And, this is for you,” he said, looking at Kylo and tossing him a shirt, of all things. I giggled as Kylo half-glowered at him and put it on anyway. 

“What, you didn’t wanna see the Supreme Abdominals?” I joked, and the Lieutenant rolled his eyes as we all took off down the hall. 

“Listen,” he hissed, especially focused. “Pryde got the other Wayfinder working.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“He’s very clearly made a deal with Palpatine. He’s moving the whole fleet to Exegol to take over command of the ships there.” 

“He suggested as much,” Kylo growled. 

“Well, I don’t know if you have any options against this army unless the Resistance has found some help, but at least you might kill the old Emperor,” Mitaka replied. I realized belatedly that he was in civilian clothes-- no uniform, no hat. I blinked. 

“Duff, what are you doing?” I asked. We were scuttling along a series of neglected corridors, approaching a tiny cargo bay on the aft side of the ship. I remembered that from the days of using my map to get around.

“I’m taking you to Exegol,” he replied, looking back at me over his shoulder. His expression was focused, charged with fear but persistent. 

“What about your post? If they find out you--”

“They won’t. I’m not coming back.” 

“What about your boyfriend?” I asked, shocked.

“Don’t worry, ducky,” he said to me as he stopped, peeked around a corner, and then kept going. “We’ve got it all sorted.” I felt a lump in my throat, right then. Mitaka was going to give up his entire life with the First Order just to help us. To help  _ me. _ I swallowed my tears as we all lined up along another wall to peek out at the cargo bay we’d finally arrived at. It was empty but for a row of shuttles all there awaiting their morning inspection, and Mitaka motioned us into the open hatch of the nearest one. As we scuttled across the open space like insects, I heard a mechanical noise at the main terminal nearby as I hurried past it. I spun, saber out in an instant and pointed at-- Lucky Sevens. 

“Pardon me, Aeon,” said the droid in its flat voice. “I did not mean to startle you.” 

“Lucky!” I exclaimed, hushing myself before my voice got too loud. I turned my saber off, flooded with relief. “What are you doing here?” 

“I am here to make sure that all of the security data for you is deleted once you depart, including my own.” Its expressionless face looked at me, and for some reason I got a strong feeling that this didn’t just mean the images of our escape. 

“...All of it?” I stared at it, suddenly horrified. “Like, ever?”

“Yes. Including your medical and personnel files and all incident reports in your record. It will be as though you were never here.” 

“Why?” I felt a huge wave of sadness wash over me, realizing that this droid who had been a kinder and more understanding doctor for me than almost any psychiatrist I’d ever had was going to forget about me. That its companionship and assistance would only exist in my memories. The lump I’d just fought off came right back into my throat.

“Because the Lieutenant believes that it could assist the enemy in locating you or manipulating you.”  _ Including my medical record… which would indicate that I am very strong with the Force... _

“But, Lucky--” 

“Do not worry, Aeon,” it said. “I am here to help.” Now my eyes flooded with tears. I had no idea why Mitaka and the droid should risk their own livelihoods for me, but I was so fucking grateful and so fucking sad. Without a second thought, I flung my arms around Lucky’s cold, metallic body. One of its mechanical arms wrapped around me in a stiff imitation of a hug. 

“You really are lucky,” I sniffled, and pulled away when I heard Mitaka’s voice in a harsh whisper over inside the shuttle.

“Come on! We have to go!” I took one last look up at the droid’s empty face. As so often happened when I did that, I felt sure it was giving a tearful smile back at me despite its immobile features. 

“Go, Aeon. Take care of yourself.” Blinking back more tears, I nodded and turned to sprint into the shuttle through the closing hatch and directly into Kylo’s arms. The hatch shut, the twin ion engines roared to life, and I knew Rey was in the cockpit and taking us directly out of the bay and into the vastness of space. I wiped my eyes as strong arms enveloped me, and noticed that Mitaka was pulling stuff out of the little storage spaces in the hangar of the small craft. I leaned into Kylo’s chest for a moment, catching my breath. 

“You’re terribly lucky that nobody even saw us, or if they did it was at the last possible second,” the Lieutenant-- or, former Lieutenant?-- said as he pulled ration bars out of a bag he’d evidently stowed away. “Eat, and drink water. I know you haven’t slept much.” 

“Thank you,” Kylo said, reaching out to take the proffered nourishment. He gave one to me and then extended his hand once more to the little man, who looked at it with a nearly comically surprised expression. “We owe you our lives.” 

“Oh,” Mitaka replied, blinking. A little uncertain, he extended his hand and shook Kylo’s enormous paw. “Well, anything for our Imminent One, right sir?” He glanced at me, giving a wan attempt at a humorous smile, and the tears I’d barely fought off just flooded back.  _ You should accept your fate, dingus. You’re gonna cry today. _

“I see you and I feel similarly,” Kylo said, smiling and looking down at me. I sniffed, wiped my eyes again, and looked between them. 

“I… I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “Duffy, you didn’t have to--”

“Pish tush, ducky, I know I didn’t have to do anything,” he tutted, grinning at me. “But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to live a happy life with Edwin somewhere far away from war. I enlisted at a very young age. I was very poor, and thought this was the best or maybe the only option.”

“Edwin, huh?” I smiled through my tears back at him. “What are you two gonna do?”

“I’ve rather thought of jogan fruit farming,” he replied with a little shrug. “Edwin’s not sold on the idea, I’m afraid. But we’ll find something.” He reached out and took the ration bar that was in my hands, peeling its wrapper off and handing it back to me pointedly. I rolled my eyes and took it back from him, wiping another stream of tears off my cheek. 

“Eat, little one,” Kylo said, one of his hands coming up to stroke my cheek. I noticed that his bar was already half gone. “You’ll need all that incredible, terrible strength of yours.” 

“We do feel similarly, indeed,” Mitaka commented, and he handed me a canteen of water just to emphasize his point. I sighed, letting the tears flow as I took it from him and proceeded to force feed myself the dense, chewy mess that is First Order rations. Smiling at me, the little man took another canteen and ration bar with him as he scuttled up towards the cockpit to give them to Rey. I was shockingly hungry, as I nearly inhaled mine despite its really special brand of unpleasantness. 

When Mitaka came back down from the cockpit, I was sitting on Kylo’s lap as he sat on one of the seats in the little hangar. We’d eaten, donned the boots he’d stowed away in the shuttle for us, and just settled like that. Not even talking, as we awaited whatever the fuck was happening next, wrapped in one another’s soothing presence. His plush lips were pressed against my forehead, just resting there, and one arm was wrapped around my back as the other rested in my lap, holding my hand. I saw Duffy stop and regard us thoughtfully. He seemed touched by Kylo’s sweetness, and surprised by it, just like pretty much everybody else did. 

“For all the hell I gave you, ducky,” he said, “it looks as though you’ve found someone who treasures you.” I felt Kylo smile against my head. 

“Funny how that works out, isn’t it?” I grinned. 

“You deserve it,” the little man said. “If I may be so bold as to say so.” 

“I’m not the Supreme Leader anymore,” Kylo said softly. “You may be as bold as you like, Dopheld.” 

“Well, that will take a great deal of adjusting to,” Duffy laughed. “It’ll take me about a thousand years not to call you ‘sir’ anymore.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Kylo purred, rubbing my back with his free hand. “I’ve got other people in my life who can do that.” I held in a snort, continually surprised at Kylo’s sense of humor.  _ And like, I guess his inner 12-year-old who is just as rowdy and ridiculous as mine. Especially in the face of certain doom. _

“So, what happened to your blonde technician?” Mitaka asked, raising an eyebrow. Now I grinned even wider and looked up at Kylo. He was also grinning. 

“Remind me to tell you about that sometime,” I replied, and I felt the wildest urge to just laugh. Unfortunately, the shuttle jerking profoundly and rattling prevented me from doing that. All three of us were on our feet and rushing up to the cockpit almost instantly, and I saw the familiar black cloud of Exegol out of the window. 

“We’re heading to the surface!” Rey called over the muted roar of our descent. “We have to get to Palpatine, the sooner the better! Finn and Poe are on the way, and hopefully help will be with them.” 

“Hopefully?” I asked, not pleased with that phrasing at all.

“Hopefully,” the girl repeated, eyes fixed on the navigation chart and the atmosphere beyond it. We broke through the cloud and once again saw the silhouettes of countless Star Destroyers. I felt my heart rate double. 

“Duffy, you’re not coming with us, I hope you know that,” I said to the little man, looking pointedly at him. 

“I’m well aware, yes,” he replied. “I’m going to take the shuttle to the central hub, which is where the shields for the whole fleet are controlled.”

“You’re going to shut them down?” Kylo asked.

“Yes. Right now, they’re protected from heavy fire. They’ll be sitting ducks if I can turn off the shields. Then I’ll come back to scoop you three up once you’ve lobbed that old corpse’s head off.” I beamed at him. 

“Duffy, you’re a fuckin’ hero,” I said. He waved me off. 

“Only if I get it right,” he half-joked. Finally, I saw the bleak surface of Exegol appear outside the window. As we drew towards it, the nose of the ship moved and brought us into landing position. 

“The three of us should stay together, just like we planned before,” Rey said. “I have a communicator that Finn and Poe should be able to contact me with once they arrive.” The uneasy rocking of the shuttle stopped suddenly, with a bit more of a clunk than when Kylo was piloting but still pretty damn good. I heard the sound of the hatch opening, and the howl of the wind on the surface. Rey stood and turned to face us. “Let’s go.” 

“Right.” I wasn’t looking forward to this, but we all turned and took off down the ramp before any of us could stop to regret literally any choice that had led us here. As we stepped into the merciless gale, I heard Mitaka’s voice behind us, just barely. 

“Don’t die, please!”

“You neither!” I shouted back, and followed the tug of Force across the barren surface of the planet towards Palpatine’s lair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not crying, YOU'RE crying T-T


	82. Chapter 82

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which shit escalates very quickly...

It was weird, how strongly the Force guided us into that awful place. It was some strange, huge structure-- building? tower? pyramid? fucking ziggurat?? who knows-- that we entered via what I can only describe as a weird space elevator. Our saber hilts were in our hands but not activated, and the tension was absolutely terrific. The damn thing moved so slow it made it that much worse. 

“You think he has guards?” Rey muttered to us as we descended. 

“Almost definitely,” I replied. 

“Or something worse,” Kylo added._ Great. Now I’m trying to imagine what could be WORSE. _

“Yeah,” was all Rey said in reply. The elevator ground to its halt, and we were deep in a cavernous mess under the surface. There was trash everywhere, hunks of machine and God knows what else, just like in the vision I’d seen on Ahch-To. I swallowed and moved very slowly and cautiously with the other two through the very dim, dank place. It felt like we were rolling up into the Mines of Moria, huge and dark and ominously empty.

I tried to gingerly step between the debris on the floor, tried not to go full Fool of a Took and make a huge noise and summon some crony of Palp’s. I could hear Kylo and Rey breathing softly, could hear their footsteps even when I was struggling to see much of anything. We passed huge abandoned tanks, empty but for abandoned tubes and wires, and other weird equipment that I wasn’t even trying to fathom the purpose of at that moment. Slowly I felt the tug of the Force (Palpatine’s tug, probably) towing me through the rubble. 

And then I looked up and realized that I was alone. The breaths and steps of the other two were gone. My heart caught in my throat, and I stopped. _Shit. Fuck!_

“Kylo?” I called softly, deciding that being heard was better than just being lost. “Rey?” The silence that answered me just made my heart pound even faster, my grip on my saber tightening. I looked around, but I was in some very shadowy place that looked just like the rest of the fucking pile. “Fuck.” 

**Aeon.** I turned at the terrible sound of that voice, and behind me I saw a towering figure. One thousand red eyes glowered out at me from the giant, smoky mass of its head. I froze, but was maybe less startled than I was supposed to be. 

“What do you want?” I asked it. 

**What I want is unimportant. What do ** ** _you _ ** **want?** Now my brow furrowed, and I stared at it almost unblinking. 

“To kill Sheev Palpatine,” I replied, frowning. “I figured that was obvious.” 

**Why? What would this attain?**

“Um. I would be protecting the galaxy from being ruled by a power-hungry Sith zombie who doesn’t care about the lives of his subjects.” 

**Ah, yes. You have always wanted to make things right, haven’t you?** The eyes were shifting, glimmering, shrinking. I stared, uncertain of what I was seeing. 

“Well, yeah. Who doesn’t?” I asked it, raising an eyebrow. _I do not trust any of this. _

**True. Every sentient creature in this galaxy and beyond it wants things to be right. It is merely the definition of what is right that sets them apart. **

“I’m sure the Emperor just wants to ‘set things right’ too,” I said, voice full of sarcasm. _Is it trying to get me to empathize with my enemy, or??_

**It is within the power of a great ruler to do so. You think an Emperor would not rule with a fair hand, that he would neglect his subjects in favor of maintaining his own power?**

“His track record leaves something to be desired,” I said dryly. 

**And do you think another ruler could do better than that?** Its face, its entire form was shrinking slowly. 

“Not really. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s just true, throughout history.” I felt myself wanting to step backwards away from the figure as it started to seem smaller, more human, and closer to me. But I held my ground, feet planted wide.

**Perhaps setting things right must be done from some other seat.** _ Now that was weird._ I raised an eyebrow.

“Like what?”

**One without power of governance. One with only the power of the Force, to heal the galaxy. Perhaps even other galaxies, other places. The Force is everywhere, is it not? If only one wished to use it this way, to right the wrongs of creation, would they not be protected from the terrible corruption of which you speak? **

I glanced around, then back at the strange demon-thing. Its eyes were vanishing, blinking out one by one.  _ Does it mean that someone who isn’t power-hungry could fix things? Isn’t that what I’m trying to do literally right now? _

**Could someone who was outside the concerns of this place not seek to heal its wounds without abuse of such a power? **

“What are you suggesting?” I asked, narrowing my eyes again. 

“I am suggesting,” said the figure, in a voice that was no longer booming through my head but actually coming from its mouth, “that you might be well-suited to the task of fixing this mess, Aeon. Perhaps that is your purpose in being here.”  _ Where the fuck do I know that voice from?  _ It didn't sound like Palpatine. But I couldn't put a finger on who the fuck it _did_ sound like.

“My purpose in being here was to help Kylo, not anything else. The rest was just an added bonus.” I can't help myself but be sarcastic in the face of danger, y'all.

“Do you know that for certain?” it asked. “The Force is powerful. I trust its wisdom, and its truth. Do you?” Now the figure was taking a much more solid form, but still an uncertain one. I knew it somewhere in the back of my skull, but I couldn’t decipher who it was. Maybe it was a lot of people? 

“I trust myself,” I said simply. I had no idea if I was lying or not, to be honest. 

“Then if you had the power to fix things, would you use it?” It had only two red eyes now, form still shadowy and without detail. And it was staring at me in a way that saw my guts jump inside my belly at that question. Because, like, obviously I would?? 

“Who are you?” I asked sharply, uncertain of this whole affair and now painfully aware that I wanted so badly to just. Rewrite this whole fucking thing. 

“I am every voice you’ve ever heard inside your head,” it replied, and this time I knew it was a lot of voices. A lot of people. A lot, all familiar and yet not specific. I stared at it, breathing hard, feeling myself connected to the thing in the most intimate and frightening way. I thought of every voice that I had literally heard. Every hallucination I’d ever had that I remembered. Every time I’d ever thought something wildly untrue, every part of me that had ever encouraged my unwavering belief in such a thought. 

“Why are you coming to me like this?” My jaw was tense, knuckles white on the saber hilt. 

“Because, Aeon. You need me. I am everything you’re afraid of. I am your fear, your anger, your sorrow, your pain. But, I can set you free. I believe in your heart, because I know it just as well as I know your darkness. You can change everything.” Those red eyes bore holes into me, and I shivered. 

“How?” 

“Let me show you.” 

I walked with the demon through the cavern, which grew lighter and lighter until I could finally see the gray mica-flecked stone it was made of and the mess started to give way to broader, less cluttered areas. The light was a weird phosphorescent glow, gentle and kinda magical as it bounced off the glittering rock. 

When I looked up past the figure, I saw a little stone seat inlaid with pebbles of black and white in a pattern that swirled. Above it was a shaft of light, descending from a high crack in the cavern ceiling. And next to it was fuckin’ Luke Skywalker. 

“Aeon,” he said, giving me a soft smile. “You’ve done so well.” 

“Uh, thanks,” I said, blinking. “How did you get here?” 

“The Force--”

“Works in mysterious ways, yeah.” I looked around, realizing that the demon was gone. “Where’d my escort go?” 

“That was a projection of all your darkness, Aeon. It guided you here. You are very unique in that you seem to understand its power, without falling victim to its blunders. And you see it in others, too. That’s why you’ve done so well, here.” He put his hand out on the stone seat. “This is a nexus of the Force’s power, just like there were at the ancient Jedi temples,” he added. 

“It’s not like the fucking sinkhole on Ahch-To, is it?” I asked warily, even though it wasn’t feeling half as spooky as that place did. 

“It’s like it, but unlike it. Each of these places is unique.” He looked back at me, face very serious. Almost too serious. “They are all powerful. They can all be used to summon great energy from the Force, and shift the very fabric of the galaxy. To tear holes in it, or stitch parts back together.” 

“So the power to fix everything, huh?” Okay, maybe that warranted being serious about. 

“Yes. I brought you here so you could make a choice, Aeon,” he said, withdrawing his hand from the stone. I was staring at the seat now, feeling its draw just like at the sinkhole, but less inexorable. More just a nagging curiosity, a bright promise. 

“What happens if I sit?” I asked.

“The Force will open to you,” Luke replied. “And you will see it in its vastness, in a way that only you can witness it. Each person who sits here will see something different, of course.” 

“Will I see home?”  _ Is this it? Is this what Luke meant when he said that I’d be able to get myself back there, in the end? Do I even want to go back?  _

“Yes.” He smiled at me again now. 

“And I’ll be able to go back there if I choose?” 

“Yes.” _Welp, that answers that. _

“But I’ll be able to remain here and set things right, before I do?” 

“You’ll be able to do whatever you desire, Aeon,” he said. “That is the power that your darkness referred to. The power of the Force, without governance or any sort of stakes in this galaxy’s affairs, with no interest in rulership. In you it is particularly balanced.” 

“And what about Palpatine?” I asked, eyes cutting back up to the bearded face I knew so well. 

“What about him?” Luke almost laughed. “When you sit here, what difference can he possibly make? This is it, Aeon. This choice is your destiny.” 

I glanced between him and the stone, thinking about home. About my parents, about my friends, about my guitar, about sunshine and pancakes and the smell of fresh laundry and my own bed in my own room where I could climb out onto the roof at night and smoke cigarettes without my parents flipping their lids. Where my friends were far away but they always said something that made me feel better, less alone despite all that. 

I thought about Ben, growing up at the speed of light; about Matt becoming whatever beautiful genderless being Matt was; about Kylo finally giving up his mask to become the angel of protection he wanted to be. I thought about Leia, Luke, Han… about the terrible loss of his entire family. I thought about Rey, so horrified by her own family ties that it shook her to her core and made her act like something I wouldn’t ever had called her before-- a coward. She ran because of how devastating it was. And now she’d turned back around to face her fear, just like Kylo and Matt and probably Ben had._ Just like I did. _

Taking a step closer to the stone, I blinked back tears that welled suddenly in my eyes. I still didn’t know if I could stay, not really. I had no idea what choice I could make there. But at least I could make a few choices now, in this universe, that might leave things better than I found them. 

“I know what to do,” I said softly, stepping in front of the seat. _I mean I have no idea HOW to do it, but I have a feeling the Force will let me know. _

“Good,” Luke nodded, taking a step away from the stone as if to make way for me. I turned, watching the ground glitter in the beam of light I was under, and sat down on the chair. 

It was way too late when I realized my mistake. 

“AEON!!” screamed a voice that was so familiar and so wrenched with pain that it stunned me. I wasn’t in a glittering cavern anymore. The light was pale and faint, and the stone was black, and in front of me was an exhausted-looking Kylo brandishing his now-white saber and staring at me with huge, terrified eyes. 

Behind me, and from within me, huge spires of darkness splayed out. And beside me was Palpatine’s corpse, laughing that terrible laugh. My eyelids fluttered as I tried to look around, but the Force was pulling at me unlike it ever had before-- like a black hole, it crushed me down into the seat and pulled at my very guts. 

“Kylo--” But I was somehow both too weak and too charged with energy to speak.

“Now the power of unknown galaxies will be mine!” laughed Palpatine in his signature melodramatic way, who was looking less and less corpse-like by the second. Lightning flew everywhere, emitting from his hands. I looked up ever so slowly to see it branching everywhere in the sky, ricocheting around the atmosphere and crushing ships I didn’t recognize. _Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck. _

“What did you do?” I asked him, spurred by a pang of fury as I glared at the old Sith. “You fucking--!” 

“I gave you everything,” Palpatine replied, his sagging and beady eyes turning to me. “I gave you the power of the Force and now I am taking it back. And you are too weak to stop me!”

“AEON!” screamed Kylo again, and sprinted up towards me. But the old man laughed, and sent him flying back onto his back on the rock. My eyes flew open, and I felt time stop. An absolute fury was boiling inside me-- _this motherfucker tricked me and now he’s gonna drain my life force and kill Kylo?? No. Fucking. Way. _

I stood, struggling and moving painfully slowly. It was literally painful, like my cells were being ripped away from the crushing center of the Force working against me. But I fought it with all my might, and felt the slow drain of the Force suddenly upend itself and start funneling back into me. Turning to face the would-be Emperor, I glared at him. He saw me and blanched, actually looking horrified-- like he was looking at a demon with a thousand eyes.

“You gave me everything,” I said, and my voice felt like it echoed through the entire cavern. “And you expected me to let you take it back so you could hurt the people I love? Fuck you!” My saber hilt was still in my hand, and even without it turning on I could feel its energy like the blade was hungry to spring out of the crystal and remove the object of my fury. Palpatine seemed small all of a sudden, like a weak old man who shrank beneath my withering gaze.

“Aeon!” came another voice, different-- Rey’s. “Aeon, don’t kill him!” 

“ _ WHY NOT? _ ” I bellowed, and my saber blade flew out so I could hold it against Palp's neck and turn to glare at the girl. She was next to Kylo, who had risen to his feet again, and they were both staring at me. _Seriously? Isn't that the ENTIRE POINT of being here??_

“Because if you strike him down you’ll fall! The darkness--” 

“Not THE darkness.  _ MY _ darkness. I know my darkness, Rey. I know who I am and I know what I fear and what I hate and what I love and what I want to protect.” I felt myself rise up, and maybe I was actually getting bigger or maybe I was just like, vibrating with Big Force Energy or something. The lightning had vanished from the air as Palpatine stood paralyzed by my immensity, and my blade. I almost laughed at him. “I know I want to kill the thing that will kill _you_ and everyone you love before it can do that!” 

“Aeon,” said Kylo, approaching me with labored steps. I saw a bruise on his face under one eye, a few tears in his shirt. “My love. Listen to her. You have the power of the Force, so much of it I don’t know what will happen to you if your anger--”

“MY ANGER?” Without skipping a beat, I turned and plunged my lightsaber through Palpatine’s body. I heard the cries of the other two as he shook, startled, then looked up at me with surprise. I snarled at his wrinkled face, bared my teeth at him. “_This_ is my anger. For once in my life, my anger will set something right.” 

But his expression melted into a terrible smile, and he began to laugh. I felt something twist up inside me then, the fury I’d turned onto him getting bigger and angrier and more insistent that I destroy everything this shell of a man stood for. Every ship in the sky that belonged to him, including the entire First Order Navy, and every scrap of metal that he stood on, and everything he’d ever touched and ruined. And all the godforsaken bad writing that had summoned him here in the first fucking place.

“How quickly my apprentice has learned the rule of two,” he burbled, still laughing. _Your apprentice? Excuse me?_ My nostrils flared and I jerked my blade through his body and cut him in half for good measure. Then I turned and looked at Rey and Kylo, who looked much more than horrified. I held out my hand and felt the massive power of the Force focusing there, more energy than I’d ever felt in my life. Fuck grandiosity. This time, I was _actually_ like a god. 

“This is how I’m going to set things right,” I told them. I felt the crack of it when a huge tree of lightning sprang up from my palm and began to strike every dreadnaught in the sky, and then to saw on the  _ Supremacy  _ where it hung above like a knife. 

“By killing everyone on those ships?” Kylo asked, voice louder this time, stepping closer to me anyway. 

“By wiping the fucking Empire out of this story. This should never have happened. Everything could’ve been better, richer, less fucking predictable!” Yeah, my irritation with the writers was present even in my anger towards Palpatine &co. I was over it. 

“Aeon,” he implored me, stepping closer again. “Please. Stop this. You said if you ever took my place, you’d give everyone in the Navy a chance to leave before you blew the First Order to pieces. You’re killing thousands-- maybe _millions_ of people if you do this.” He was right, of course, and had I been in my right mind I would’ve heard it. But in my present state I was even angrier at his words, even more pissed that he was telling me who I was, what I wanted, like he knew. Like he knew anything about me, or what I’d suffered before I came here. Before I was  _ brought  _ here against my will. 

“I can make my own choices, Kylo,” I spat at him, sending an extra surge of lightning to illustrate my point. _I wish everyone would STOP telling me what to do or who to be! _

“You have to make another choice, then,” he replied, face hardening, and he held out his weapon as its white blade sprang to life. Without warning he sprang at me, and the lighting vanished as I swung my saber up to meet his. His eyes were black, and they pierced me with an intensity only he could wield. But it wasn’t furious or even tantalizing. It was laser-focused and imploring and totally determined.

“What?” I hissed as sparks flew from where our blades met. 

“Decide if you’re going to kill  _ me  _ or not,” he replied, and he gave a mighty shove. Our weapons sputtered and flew apart, and then he bore down on me with all his strength.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ..... *hides under a rock*


	83. Chapter 83

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ad,jgbaldfkjgaetk;gu

To be honest with y’all, what with my being super fuckin’ juiced on the Force, Kylo didn’t stand a chance. It feels weird to say that. I had only started to feel like we were matched equally in the past couple weeks, but there was no denying that I was in control of this situation. He came for me relentlessly, though, like he didn’t know I was beyond his ken at that point. 

Or, maybe he did know. 

Paradoxically, knowing I was in control made me even angrier this time. Normally feeling like I’m in control makes me LESS angry. I could sit here and blame it all on Palpatine, like he’d leeched himself into my body or something and was exerting his powerful and nasty influence on me. But I didn’t feel invaded, or influenced, or dissociated. I felt fully like myself, and fully convinced that my hatred was warranted. I didn’t want to kill Kylo, obviously, but I did want him to fuck off and let me zap the Emperor out of this wonky-ass canon. He was, of course, not having it. 

“Aeon, stop this!” he insisted between blows as our sabers sang through the dusty air. 

“Stop what? You’re the one who attacked me!” I replied, deflecting a blow.

“I mean stop trying to win this war single-handedly! This is a drastic measure and you know it!” 

“I dunno if you forgot, sweetie, but General Pryde kicked us out and now the First Order is our enemy,” I retorted. He spun around and parried a swing of mine, but I’d anticipated it and used the block to spin another strike from the other direction. He caught it, barely, and heaved it back at me. 

“The Resistance has support! A whole fleet showed up while we were down here!” Now he was bearing back down on me, and I kinda just let him, lazily knocking away his blows. 

“That’s nice, do they stand a chance? And won’t they take heavy losses?” I said. 

“They might take losses but we can help them!” Kylo said. “Mitaka already disabled the shields--”

“So the personnel on those ships are all gonna die anyway at the hands of a Resistance army?” I pointed out, violently blocking a strike of his and pushing back now as my anger flared up again. His parries and blocks were growing desperate, sloppy. “So if I just zapped them, fewer Resistance fighters would be dead and the same number of First Order people would be dead?” 

“But you would be lost,” he panted, and our blades crashed against one another again. I looked into his weary, burning eyes over the crackling light where they touched. 

“I was never here, Kylo,” I said, feeling a very strange feeling well up inside me at that moment. After all, I wasn’t canon. I wasn’t part of this story, was I? Not really. Despite fighting for a sense of validity, of finding my place here, the doubt had never really left me. Especially now that I had become a monster of my own kind, I knew I belonged back home with my parents and my crazy disease and my therapy sessions and my medication and my fucking recovery from life. I couldn’t control my madness here, either, or else why would Kylo be wasting every drop of his effort trying to stop me? “I’m not  _ supposed _ to be here. This isn’t my home.” 

“Just because you weren’t born here doesn’t mean you don’t belong here,” he said, pushing back against me with all that remained of his strength. Suddenly the arc of the Force between us was vivid and vital, like I’d almost forgotten about it and it had sprang back up in protest. My heart fluttered, my guts twisted, and I felt even more uncertain of myself. 

“Kylo,” I growled. “Don’t just say that to get what you want.” 

“What do you think I want, Aeon?” he barked, and I felt his anger rise up. But it wasn’t just anger, it was indignation; it was hurt. “Do you think I  _ don’t _ want you to stay with me? Do you think I don’t want you the way you are?”

“ _ THIS _ is the way I am!” I shouted, and I shoved him back and away from me. He staggered, and nearly fell. Without warning I caught the song of another saber in the air, and I spun around to catch Rey’s blow. She looked surprised that I’d moved that fast, that I’d known she was coming. I glared at her over our blades, too. “What about you, desert girl? What do you want me to do, hm?” 

“I want you _not_ to become what we came here to defeat,” she said, her voice strained. My eyes narrowed, and I spun my blade in a block that sent her backwards. She leapt at me again and we danced for a moment, blades clashing. She was lithe and quick, more like my own style and less like Kylo’s. But I grounded myself, and let her wear herself out trying to be faster than my keen, augmented awareness. 

That awareness was extra handy when Kylo came at me again, this time wielding two sabers. One was his, and one was Matt’s. In fact, when I turned and sent his strike back at him only to parry and spin away from his second blow, I realized that it wasn’t Kylo at all. 

“Aeon!” Matt called, expression drawn and openly sad, scared, determined. “Please!” 

“You too?” I started to spin and stopped listening to the calls of my opponents-- I needed the flow of the Force to keep moving in a way that saw two people with three blades as they came for me. 

“Why won’t you listen?” Matt said, and there were tears in his eyes. “You could be here with us, help us rebuild! A new galaxy, no Empire and no First Order and not the same old Jedi Order and New Republic bullshit as before!” 

“Yeah! Think about it!” Rey added, seeming just as distraught. It occurred to me faintly that I should be touched that even Rey was invested in me, but nothing I felt except my frustration and anger and the pain of being made small and being constantly doubted (because I mean, who trusts crazy people to know what they’re talking about, right?) stayed with me very long. I batted them both off in fluid motions, used the Force to guide me as we sprang over the debris and equipment and whatever the fuck else was in that cavern. 

“Don’t you want to go see Coruscant with me one day? Or see the oceans on Kamino and the caves under Sullust with Kylo?” Matt was trying even as he spun and lashed at me with his weapons, much more controlled than he had been the last time I’d crossed blades with him. 

“It doesn't matter,” I replied, voice almost toneless as I moved. “I’m going home one way or another.” 

“You can have a home here, Aeon!” Rey insisted before I blocked her and spun away. 

“I thought you already did have a home here!” Matt added, even more upset than before. “With me! With  _ us! _ ” 

“You don’t understand, Matt,” I replied, punctuating my point with a blow that he twisted away. “I’m batshit crazy.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” he said, feinting and striking at me while I knocked away Rey’s blade and then jumped away from them both, barely avoiding the tip of his saber. 

“It means I can’t be trusted! That my brain will just fly off the handle no matter what! And here it could be even worse than it would be at home! I mean just LOOK at me!” I shouted, suddenly full of furious pain. I was up on top of a hunk of machinery above them both, and they stopped and looked up at me, frozen. I had the high ground, after all. I sucked in breaths around the tears that were forming in my eyes. “Neither of you trusts me now. Not with all this power Palpatine gave me. If I lose my shit, this whole goddamn galaxy could go up in flames with me!” It really felt like that, like I could just rip up the whole universe and stuff it in the garbage like a shitty comic book. 

“We all know what it’s like to be afraid of your power, Aeon,” Rey said. Her eyes were sincere, her face softening. “That was the first thing you and I understood about each other.” 

“Just because you make a mistake-- even a massive one-- doesn't mean you don’t belong,” Matt added. “You taught me that.” 

“I don’t wanna make any massive mistakes,” I insisted, hands shaking. “I don’t want the responsibility of this power. I can’t-- what if I ruin it?” 

“Ruin what?” Matt asked, exasperated.  _ He doesn’t understand. The fourth wall is very unbroken with all of them. Even Luke wouldn’t know, not the way I do, what’s at stake. What if I ruin the whole story? What if I just made a mess and everyone else had to clean it up?  _ Not as if the writers hadn’t done that already, but now here I was trying to fix anything but myself. 

_ Wait. I’m not supposed to fix anything but myself.  _ I blinked as the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Just as I opened my mouth to say something, though, a horrifying and searing pain wracked me. But it was a familiar pain, too. My eyes fell down to the bright blue blade that was protruding from my guts. 

“Wha--” It vanished, and I turned my head (which already felt like I was moving it through water) behind me. 

There was Ben, his eyes red and full of tears, holding a saber hilt in his hand. I didn’t recognize it. He was much older now, maybe even the same age as Kylo and Matt, and in the same huge body though he held himself in it like an unfamiliar suit. His hands shook and his lip crumpled. 

“Please don’t go,” he murmured. I staggered around to face him, hand coming over the wound in my body._ That’s the second time someone’s put a hole slap through me in this story,_ I thought distantly. I’m still shocked I didn’t fall; I also didn’t even feel my deactivated saber hilt slip out of my hand and clatter to the ground beside me. 

“B-Ben,” I said, trying to breathe and struggling. “You-- you’re so grown up.” He looked shocked and even more upset that this was apparently my brain’s first response to being stabbed by him, and tears ran down his face. 

“Aeon, I’m sorry,” he said, dropping the saber hilt. I tried to take a step, but the world spun in very much the wrong way for a moment. He stepped up close to me lightning fast, wrapping a huge arm around my torso and gripping my shoulder with his other hand. His watery brown eyes held mine in the most bizarre parade of emotions. I couldn’t tell if he was horrified, desperate, resigned, protective, trying to comfort me? Was I drunk on the Force and also the whole getting stabbed thing? I certainly hadn’t felt quite this discombobulated the last time I’d gotten lightsabered in the belly. 

“No, I’m sorry,” I replied quietly, looking away from him. “You asked me to help you. I failed. I suck.” 

“No you didn’t.” His hand came up to shakily pull my face by the cheek back up towards him, like he was afraid he was doing it wrong. Like he wasn’t sure if he should be romantic or forceful, like he might need to slap me back to consciousness in the way people always did in the movies when they were afraid someone they loved was dying before the ambulance could arrive. “You showed me so much, Aeon. You’re wise and strong. Not because you never screwed up, probably the opposite actually.” 

“But your mom--”

“I hadn’t seen her in so long before she came to help Kylo,” he cut me off gently. “Or dad. I’m so grateful you let them come back. I woke up inside my safe place on dad’s ship the other night and I cried.” _Wait…_

“Wasn’t I naked then?” I asked, almost laughing in the slowly descending delirium. Normally I might’ve been mortified but at that moment it was just funny. You know, like things are always funny when you’re dying? 

“I’m sorry,” he almost laughed back, but more tears gave him away. He didn’t think it was as funny as I did. “I promise I didn’t look. But you’re part of the reason I got to see it again.” 

“Oh,” I sighed, sagging into his arms even more. “That makes me happy.” 

“Aeon, please,” he begged, tightening his grip. “Please stay. Please.” 

“I…” I felt too woozy, and the tiny part of my brain that was still lucid-ish was confused as to why Ben was asking me to stay when I was clearly on my way out due to how he’d stabbed me to death.  _ Am I missing something here? _ “I’m… cold…” 

My eyes were starting to get blurry, but I swear to God I saw two more figures approach me then. One was blonde, the other the same dark hair as Ben. Then I saw another figure, a much smaller one with three buns in their hair. _Oh, Rey’s still here?_ My brain was not at its optimum functioning, y’all. I collapsed against Ben’s huge, warm chest. But I couldn't feel the warmth of it. Hands came from all sides to gently lower me to the ground, and I stared up at the darkening ceiling of the very weird place I was about to die in. For a moment I saw myself, curled up in my bed next to my guitar. At home. My parent’s house. I blinked slowly, brow knitting in confusion. 

“Aeon,” came a voice, and my eyes swam back towards the face that had spoken. It was Matt’s, under a cascade of blonde hair. “I can’t make you stay here with us. I won’t try. But I love you so, so much.” 

“We all do,” Kylo said, and I saw his face next. I blinked again, trying to smile at him. 

“I know,” I sighed, barely able to summon the strength to speak. 

“Don’t be afraid,” came a sweeter voice, and I saw Rey bend over me. “The First Order is gone. The Emperor is gone. You didn’t make a mistake, Aeon. This is a clean break. We can start over, now.” _Well that was an awfully nice thing to say,_ I thought. I smiled at her, too. 

“I like you,” I murmured to her. “You got moxie, kid. You take care of those boys. They’re lost without you.” I meant Finn and Poe, of course. She knew it, too, I could tell by her smile. And maybe a little blush? _Wait, maybe they ARE in a loving polyamorous triad…_

“Thank you,” Ben said, and I looked back up to see his face above mine. I felt his hands on either side of my head, big and warm and comforting. “Hang on, okay?”

“Where we goin’?” I asked, trying to look at all the faces around me. “This some Wizard of Oz shit.”

I faintly heard laughter, and then everything went black. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, will you promise not to kill me if i promise this isn't the end???
> 
> sorry my updates have been slow, y'all. it's like my brain doesn't want it to end T-T  
i love y'all despite the upsetting updates!!!! <3


	84. Chapter 84

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything is alright after all, I think?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all asked for victory smut. so, here it is!

When I woke up, I was in my own bed. At home. In my parent’s house. Sunlight was filtering in through the white curtains on the large window, and everything was quiet. I knew that my parents weren’t home, it was so quiet. I blinked, reaching up to rub my eyes. 

The weird part was when I felt the arm that was wrapped around my waist shift, and the warm body behind mine move just a little closer to me. And felt a familiar nose press itself into the back of my neck. I froze, extremely confused. 

“Uh,” I said. “Hello?” 

“Yes, little one?” came a sleepy murmur near my ear.  _ Ohmigod what is happening?? _

“I. Uh. I’m... “ I had no idea what to say, I realized. No idea what to even ask him. His hand started to stroke my belly softly. Yep, I was stark naked, too. This made sense in the context of who was with me, but not in the context of the setting. 

“You’re lovely,” he sighed, nuzzling me again. 

“Oh.” I felt myself blush, as though that was a surprise. Then again, everything felt like a surprise just then. “Well, I, um--”

“Come here, little thing,” he cooed, tugging me towards him just when I thought I was already close as I could get. His other arm came up from under my pillow, turned my face around towards his gently. He was pulling my body against him, turning me up to face the ceiling even as I laid back against him, one huge hand splayed out over my low belly. Immediately I felt myself flush all over, a heat I knew very well springing up in my core. 

“K-Kylo…” I breathed, still wanting to protest and figure out what was going on. Wasn’t I too old to be fucking someone in my room at my parent’s house? I mean I guess it doesn’t matter if you happen to have nowhere else to do it, which I didn’t because of the precarious situation I’d found myself in after my last trip to the hospital, but…

“Mmmm,” he hummed as his hand left warm trails over the skin of my belly and thighs. He moved his leg just so, causing my legs to very conveniently fall apart from each other. I could feel his cock against the small of my back, too, swollen from sleep but just as insistent as ever. His finger trailed down the crevice where my torso met my thigh. 

“W-what, um,” I began breathily, shivering under his teasing touch. I was fast losing my resolve to ask him what the fuck was going on. His face turned to press his nose into my temple, and I heard him inhale deeply.

“Is this alright?” he asked, hand going still.

“Yes,” I said firmly.  _ Oh yes. This is very alright. _ His hand resumed touching my skin, straying closer and closer to where I was fast getting real, real slick. A little sound full of desire escaped my throat. 

“Little thing,” he said, moving his leg again so that my legs draped on either side of it. His quad beneath me was breathtaking, huge and solid as stone. “You are the most delicious creature to wake up to.” My eyes fluttered shut as his finger finally ran up from my center to my clit, dragging wetness with it, and I sucked in air at the sensation. 

“Oh fuck,” I whispered. He kept teasing me, light touches activating every single nerve ending I had. My muscles started to twitch with desire. 

“Did you want something?” he cooed, mocking me just a little. I gripped his leg, the one that wasn’t between mine, and sank my nails in just a little. 

“Don’t tease me,” I breathed. “Please.” 

“A ‘please’ already?” Now his finger dipped between my folds, rubbing a sensitive spot near my entrance, and I felt myself clench. Then it moved lower, and curled up inside me with a burst of pleasure. I clenched again, and gasped. “How sweet.” 

“Oh my God.” My chest was already starting to rise and fall quickly. His finger made circles against my g-spot and I whimpered. 

“You like that, don’t you little one?” He was already very satisfied with himself, despite the fact that he was one of the people in the world who had the least trouble getting a response from me. The other person was his alter, anyway. 

“Yes, Kylo,  _ please _ give me more,” I replied, keeping my voice quiet despite the fact that I knew nobody was home.

“Anything you want, sweet thing.” He added another finger and I moaned, eyes shutting again. His palm was rubbing my clit as he moved them, an alternating flow of sensations that started to build up very quickly inside me. Too weak with sleep to resist and build up tension, instead his ministrations just shot intense sensations right up through my body. I started to rock my hips into his hand, and I felt him begin to grind his hard length into my bum in time and heard little growls escape his lips. 

“Oh fuck, I’m so close--!” My thigh muscles were already twitching a little, my hands gripping his leg and the bed sheets as everything in my core got hot and tight. And then his touches vanished, and my eyes flew open as I swore at myself for forgetting that he was like this. “Goddammit!” 

“Such a dirty mouth,” he murmured into my ear, putting two fingers on either side of my stiff clit and leaving them there to torment me. I realized dully that I was no longer in my parent’s house, but instead in some kind of bedroom somewhere else. The same bright light was everywhere, but I could barely see a huge cityscape outside the nearby window.  _ What the-- _

But then he was shifting me again, sliding me up along his powerful body just enough for his cock to spring out and stand itself against my cunt. Its curve matched me so perfectly it boggled the mind. His hand left my clit and instead wrapped itself under my bent knees, holding my legs together and then pulling them back against my body to expose my nethers to the air. Slowly he moved his hips just enough to slide his cock around in my growing wetness, letting its tip brush over my clit repeatedly.

“Kylooo,” I mewled, already reduced to a pitiful state. I felt him smirk against my face. 

“What? What’s wrong, little one?” 

“You are so  _ mean. _ ” I wriggled as much as I could, but he held me firm and kept up his movements. 

“Now, that’s not entirely fair,” he tutted. “I’m making you so wet that when I finally fuck you, you’ll want it so bad you can feel it in your bones.” 

“I can feel it  _ now, _ ” I hissed, gripping the sheets on either side of his body. I was fully on top of him now, and not quite helpless-- but of course, I loved his games as much as I kinda hated them. 

“You’re so impatient,” he said, rubbing his nose along my cheek languidly.

“You’re so right,” I retorted. 

“What do you want, then?” 

“I want you inside me, please.” 

“Well,” he sighed, and then I felt him shift the head of his cock to my entrance. It hovered there, barely inside, and I almost vibrated with need. “I suppose, since you were polite about it…” Finally he pushed up and filled me with him, and I let out a shuddering moan at the end of my gasp. Slowly his hips worked, pushing up against every spot I had. 

“Christ,” I said, feeling my legs shake under his iron grip. “Oh,  _ thank  _ you.” 

“So sweet, even if you are needy,” he remarked, infuriatingly casual. But I heard his breaths get harder, heard the faint growl in his voice. 

“Does it feel good, big boy?” I asked him, getting smug. In reply he slammed his hips up into me, and I yelped. Everything inside me was getting coiled up again, heat building fast. 

“It feels,” he murmured into my ear, and I shivered at his hot breath, “incredible.” Now his pace started to pick up, and he turned us over without missing a beat to lie on our sides on the bed. His hand slipped around my neck, holding me out a little away from him so he could angle himself in for deeper thrusts. I was moaning with every one, and he let go my legs to push his hand down between them and rub my clit. 

“Fuck!” I howled, feeling the edge come roaring up. “Kylo!” 

“Gonna cum for me, aren’t you, little thing?” he said, thrusting even harder. 

“ _ Yes! _ ” My eyes rolled back as the orgasm hit, and I shook as it took me over. His hips paused, but his hand remained steady touching me. I heard him groan as I clenched and unclenched around him, gasping for breath. 

“I love to feel that,” he muttered, moving back to press his lips into my cheek. “That powerful little body of yours, trying to fill itself up with me when you cum.” 

“Fuck-- shit--” 

“Fierce one,” he purred, and the hand on my neck moved to turn my face around towards his. “Your Queen only wants to watch you come apart for me.” 

“Oh,” I breathed into his mouth as it hovered over mine. “Matt--” I knew they’d switched again as those lips full of tender dominance claimed mine, suckling my lower lip and tracing around with his tongue. My heart melted right along with my body. I wondered when he was gonna switch pronouns, because that’s the kind of thought my brain likes to throw out sometimes in the afterglow of a good climax. The kind that I don’t bother to say out loud because he’s already pulled out of me and ripping his mouth away as he turns me over onto my stomach. 

“Mmm, you’re so sweet,” he said into my bum as he lifted it up off the bed, settling behind me and running his nose along one cheek before I felt his tongue snake along my slit with delicate hunger. 

“Oooooh,” I sighed into the pillow as he took to my swollen nub, lapping at it with insistence. Already my nerves were back to jumping around with his strokes, and I felt like I might ooze right off my bones and into a puddle on the bed. “Your loveliness, that feels so good...” 

He just hummed into me before he dragged his mouth up to my ass and started to lick the puckered opening there, slipping a finger inside my cunt in the same motion. I couldn’t stop the groans that came out of me, my body sparkling in response. When he had me twitching a little, he pulled away and pressed his hardness up against me again, leaning down to lay his body against my back and dragging his lips all the way up my spine in the process. 

“My sweet Aeon,” he sighed against me, and his hands slid up my arms and wrapped themselves around mine, fingers weaving. “I’m yours. Your pet, your angel, your queen.” Despite the fact that he was so romantic it made me want to literally fall apart, I pushed my bum back against him. 

“And I,” I murmured, shifting just a little beneath him so I could rub my cheek on his, “am yours, Mattau.” He moved, and slid himself obligingly inside me with a soft growl. He held us there for a moment in the way he liked to, taking in the whole sensation of being sheathed as our hearts beat in time against each other. “And your alter’s, I guess.” 

“Just because you’re mine,” he whispered, “doesn’t mean you can’t belong to other people, too.” _ Spoken like a true relationship anarchist, _ I thought, and the sentiment flooded me with joy. Because I felt the same way, really. Not that a whole lot of other people had been around to show up as points of interest for either him or Kylo, but still. As long as they weren’t mean to my precious ones.  _ Plus it might be kinda hot to watch someone else fuck Matt… _

His first thrust distracted me from my reverie of polyamorous bliss. I tightened around him as he worked me deep and steady, moaning into the pillow. My limbs went limp as my core got tighter and tighter. 

“Fuck! It’s-- it’s so--it’s so fucking  _ good-- _ ”

“Yeah?” he cooed, pressing his lips into my cheek again.

“Oh God, yes,” I gasped. “Fuck me, please,  _ please _ keep fucking me--”

“You’re so hot,” Matt murmured, and I heard the slaps of his body against mine get louder as he arched his back away from me and slammed himself in harder. “You beg like you’re giving orders.” 

“Fuck-- don’t-- stop-- Matt--”

“Maker,” he growled, sitting back and letting go of my hands so he could grab my hips instead and rut even harder. I saw stars, babbling as I started to key up and felt another orgasm approaching. “Shit!”

“Ohhh _ fu-- _ ” I froze when the first wave crashed over me, clamping down tight on him and then spasming. He held me there on his cock even as his thrusts slowed. My hands shook on the bed as I let out little mewling cries. 

“Little thing,” came his voice, or rather Kylo’s voice. “I want your pretty mouth to clean up the mess you’ve made all over my cock. Can you do that?” 

“Y-yes,” I managed to say, half blind from the sensations that wracked me still. He pulled out and gently turned me over to climb up onto me, his unfathomable legs on either side of my head and his length in my face. I sighed as I scooted back a little, up a little, just enough that I could reasonably get him into my throat if I tried hard and believed in myself. And believe in myself I did. 

“Shit,” he hissed when my tongue stroked him from base to tip. I wrapped his head in my lips and worked my way down slowly, licking my own juices off him. One of his enormous hands came down to pet my head, to guide it as it bobbed up and down. “Oh, you’re so good. You’re  _ so _ fucking good,” he crooned. I hummed, and gently started to massage the opening of his ass. I felt his body tense, but not away from my touch. Rather the opposite. I opened my bleary eyes and stared up at him, watched his face as I stole spit from my own blow job to start to ease him open. His expression was wildly hot, mouth falling open as his red, shiny lips trembled just a little. Those black eyes were on mine as I slid a finger inside him and crooked it just so, a gentle touch that caused his eyes to roll back a little. My other hand snaked up to his cock to assist my mouth, all the while I watched his face contort with pleasure. Tugging him out of my mouth, I pressed my lips against the underside of his head. The expressions that crossed his face were amazing. 

“Mmm,” I hummed. “You’re so cute when I fuck you.” 

“Rrrrgh,” was all he said in reply. I smirked, kissing his cock and then spitting on it as I stroked it vigorously. It was a surprise when his hand strayed down to my crotch behind him, and started to pet my clit. I saw his chest start to flush red with arousal when he saw my face react to his touch. “Be a good little thing and put my cock back in your mouth.” 

_ God, that’s so hot _ . I slowly obliged him, letting him work his way back towards the back of my throat while I kept my finger sliding in and out of him and his attentions on my clit increased in intensity. Something about us watching each other while we did this, something about the way his lip curled and his cheeks flushed and his eyes bore holes into mine while my eyelids fluttered and I took his cock as deep as I could manage (which was deeper than I thought, because I was distracted by the ascending electricity coming from my clit) just brought us both so close to the brink I felt sure he was gonna stop again just to fuck with me. 

So I was pleasantly surprised when his hand got furious and my whole body sparkled and shook, orgasm blossoming while his cock was still drawing itself in and out of my mouth. He groaned and panted as he watched me cum, felt my throat tighten around him and my finger stutter in his ass. 

“Fuck!” he snarled, rubbing me out even as I felt his cock twitch in my mouth. Then I tasted it, the salty satisfaction of his climax, and I managed to flutter my finger against his prostate one more time as he spilled down my throat. My legs twitched as he pushed deeper in, ragged exhales scraping out of his mouth. I withdrew my finger and he slowly pulled himself out from between my lips, quickly falling over to my side before he could sag back onto my chest and crush me under his immense and solid muscle. He tugged me towards him, panting, clumsy. 

“Hello my love,” I said softly as I drew up next to him, entangled our legs and put my hand on his chest. 

“Hmmm,” he replied, a little smile on his face. “Good morning, fierce one.” 

“Oh, it’s Matt who’s talking now, is it?” 

“Yeah.” He blushed a little and I wanted to squeak, it was so cute. “You’re so hard to resist.”

“Then don’t try,” I advised, grinning a little and leaning down to place an easy kiss on his lips. He hummed happily into it. “Matt?” I said as I drew away. 

“Yeah?” 

“That was extremely lovely and all, but… what the fuck happened?” I glanced around and saw the room I was in more clearly than I had before, but it was still totally unfamiliar. 

“You don’t remember what happened on Exegol?” he asked, brow furrowing. 

“I remember Ben stabbed me with a lightsaber,” I replied flatly. “I remember I saw all three of you and Rey too. And then I got nothin’, till waking up just now. Where even are we?” 

“We’re on Coruscant,” he replied, “At my parent’s old place.” My eyes flew out the window and noticed for the first time the sheer quantity of flying cars outside. 

“Really?” I jumped off the bed and went over to the glass, staring out at the impossibly vast cityscape that was just crawling with moving lights and vehicles and people and--

“You’re so fucking cute,” Matt giggled behind me. I felt myself blush a little, but I kept staring in defiance. 

“I’ve never been here before,” I murmured. “It’s even more busy than Nar Shaddaa, somehow.” 

“There’s a lot of visitors.” I heard him rise and walk up behind me. Then I felt his hands slide around my waist, saw his reflection behind mine just barely. He nuzzled the top of my head. 

“Wow.” I could have watched the view for days and not seen even half of what was going on, I had a feeling. Then, another thought occurred to me. “Wait!” I exclaimed, spinning around in his arms. “How did we get here? What happened to--”

“Aeon,” he said, almost hushing me. “Calm down. We healed your wound. I assumed the Force would show you something, I dunno what exactly, but something that would let you choose whether to stay here or not. When you didn’t vanish into thin air, or whatever else, we brought you back here with us.” 

“Is Rey here too?” I asked, raising a brow. 

“No, she’s gone off on her own for now.” 

“That’s her thing, isn’t it? Being alone?” 

“Kinda seems like it,” Matt replied with a shrug. “Although if she can keep Finn and Poe away, I’ll be shocked. My money’s on them following her and dragging her along with them on Maker knows what kind of misadventures.” 

“Well, that’s cute,” I said, giving a little grin. “Have I been awake since we arrived?”

“Yes, you seemed quite alright yesterday.” He frowned, looking worried. “I mean, you were recovered from your wound. You were tired, and slept a lot, but insisted on curling up with me which seemed pretty normal. You really don't remember?” I shook my head. His mouth twisted thoughtfully. “Hm. I wonder what that’s about.” 

“The Force didn’t show me anything,” I said, voice quiet. “I never got to choose to go back or to stay, at least not that I remember.” 

“Are you... upset about that?” he asked, careful not to let his tone sound accusatory.

“Not really.” I sighed and looked at the floor, kinda baffled by my own answer.  _ Shouldn’t I be mad? Or upset that maybe I really AM stuck here? Or at least just upset that I never seemed to get a chance to decide? _ But I didn’t want to decide, hadn’t wanted to for quite some time.

“Then perhaps your choice was already made,” he said sweetly, a tiny smile on his face. I looked back at him now, into his big brown eyes, and smiled back. My heart flooded with joy, the kind I had been terrified to let myself feel for the entire length of my time here in the Star Wars universe.

“Maybe so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's so close to the end and part of me is so relieved and the other part of me is so sad T-T


	85. Chapter 85

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Luke sets the record straight.

The next day, I was sitting on the balcony outside the apartment (I guess it’s an apartment? Whatever they call this type of place in Star Wars) watching the pandemonium of the air traffic on Coruscant. Matt and Kylo and Ben and I had spent the day before talking (in turns, of course, and the system leaving notes on their little datapad for one another) about where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do. 

Kylo wanted to atone as much as he could for his past, which I didn’t blame him for. Mostly this seemed to entail doing good for people on the smallest scale-- visiting outer rim worlds and bringing as much technology and education to them as he could, helping individuals escape dire predicaments, and scouring the galaxy for remnants of the Order. And showing me the most beautiful landscapes in the galaxy, of course. 

Matt wanted to learn more about themself (yes, Matt had officially switched to ‘they’ pronouns during the course of our talk, which yes, I was extremely excited about!!) and to learn more about the things they wanted to do. So building and repairing engines (which dovetailed with Kylo’s ideas nicely, I thought), using the Force to understand anger rather than letting anger take over, and apparently building a guitar for me. Yes, adorable and perfect Mattau wanted to build a fucking guitar for me-- from what the two of us could remember from the one that got blown up with the_ Supremacy. _ I cried a little when they told me that. You would have too!

Ben wanted, after all these years, to become a great pilot. He wanted to fly fast and perfect. He wanted to get money for us by winning pod races (yes, really.) Learning more about the Force was also on his list, and seeing new places and just figuring out what he loved most to do since his experiences had been so limited until now. He was grown, but he kept this childlike sense of joy and curiosity about everything that honestly I loved so much. Cuz you forget what magical things are out there sometimes, yanno? But for Ben, everything really was fresh and new. 

Me? What did I want to do? Fuck, y’all. I have no idea. I felt like Ben a little-- who was I in this place? Without a diagnosis, without a mission, without the limitations of the world I’d left behind? I had no fucking idea. I wanted to play music still (Matt’s guitar was exciting, but maybe I could learn some space instruments too?) and maybe we could find other Force-sensitive people whose brains were somehow like mine and teach them the ways of the Force. Empower them to make their own choices, too. Fuck knows there was probably always gonna be some asshole Sith-type person scrounging the galaxy for suggestible but potentially powerful people to manipulate. I guess my urge to help people was just as strong as ever, but here I felt like maybe I actually could. Plus, I was totally gonna visit Duffy and his future husband on whatever farm they ended up on. And I kinda wanted to keep in touch with Rey and Finn and Poe, and see what the fuck was going on with whatever new government took off now that the New Republic and the First Order weren’t even remotely around anymore. Not that I was interested in getting into politics, or whatever, but yanno. It’s just how I am, I guess. 

ANYWAY. I was sitting on the balcony thinking about all this. And most of me was excited, exhilarated even. Was this a happy ending? It certainly seemed like it. But something wasn’t sitting right still; some part of me still felt like the missing piece of deciding to be here wasn’t a good thing to miss. My whole bag from the start had been making your own choices, being responsible for them. It kinda flew in the face of my values to just… let it go. 

My pondering must’ve been reverberating through the Force or something, because when I looked beside me at the other chair on the balcony, Luke Skywalker was sitting in it. He was fuzzy, faded like a Force ghost should be I reckon. I raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Hey there, old man,” I said with a grin. 

“What happened to ‘Uncle Luke,’ huh?” he replied, pouting a little. “I like that better than ‘old man.’”

“Oh, alright then Uncle Luke,” I laughed. “Nice to see you.” 

“Yeah, well. I think I owe you a visit.” 

“Why’s that?” As if I didn’t know.

“I know you wanna know what happened on Exegol,” he said, looking at me. _ He never was one to beat around the bush, _ I thought. 

“Yeah. I really do. It’s bugging me.” 

“Well,” he sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, Aeon. It’s my fault you don’t remember, I think. It wasn’t on purpose, though. For some reason, the exchange really wiped out your mind.”

“Exchange?” 

“Do you remember what happened when you were healed?” 

“Is that what Matt and Ben and Kylo and Rey did? I saw all four of them before I passed out.” I mean I kinda figured, since I wasn’t dead despite being stabbed… AGAIN. Yes, I was gonna give Ben shit about that basically for the rest of his life. 

“You saw _all_ of them?” He looked intrigued. “I suppose that makes sense, given how powerful you were, actually. So, you appeared in front of me on Ahch-To while that was happening. All the Force convening on you like that, and you came to talk to _ me, _” he added, chuckling. “I was very honored.” 

“You brought me here, ding-dong,” I reminded him with a grin. “Of course I wanted to talk to you.” 

“Let me think I’m special, okay?” He grinned back. 

“You are special. You’re Luke fuckin’ Skywalker!” 

“Don’t get me started,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. He still wasn’t buying into his legendary status, of course. No surprise there. “Anyway. You asked me if you should stay here or go home.” 

That seemed like something I would’ve done. I was lost in that moment, totally at odds with myself. My heart wanted to be in two places at once, but the memory of home was so faded that I felt obligated to cling to it. I met his eyes and said nothing, inviting him to continue.

“Of course, I told you I couldn’t make that choice for you,” Luke said. “You were kinda upset. You wanted both, I think.” 

“I… yeah.” I looked at my hands. That was true. 

“You asked me if you could stay a while, or if you had only this one chance to choose. If you were stuck with whichever choice you made forever.” That also sounds like me. I hate being stuck. “I told you that the power of the Force that you wielded could and likely would unravel your mind the longer you held it. It would shred any ordinary mind in much less time, but even someone so extraordinary as you couldn’t hang on for as long as a lifetime.” 

“Oh. Shit.” Now my gaze rose back up to him, blinking in surprise. 

“So you could make the choice to stay and risk falling apart, losing your capability to return yourself home, or you could go home now,” he said. _ Wow, fuck. _ But slowly the emotions of these events were crawling back into my gut. No traditional memories, but the visceral sensation of grief, of fear, of longing. The frustration I must’ve felt with no longer thinking I had a real choice. What the fuck would ‘unravelling’ look like? What about Kylo, Ben, and Matt? Would they have to watch my body weaken, my mind drift away? Or worse, would I implode and become someone I never wanted to be? _ Fuuuuuck. _“But of course,” continued the old Jedi with another grin, “It didn’t take you very long to find a third choice.”

“What?” I asked, very interested. I wasn’t even gonna joke about how in-character that was for me. 

“You asked me if I could take the power you had instead, and use it to let you go back later. When or if ever you asked.” He was smiling at me now, not grinning. A whole ‘nother thing. 

“So, I’m guessing… you did?” I raised my eyebrows, a little confused, but mostly just really hopeful I hadn’t made a weird desperate call I couldn’t remember making. His smile got wider.

“I wasn’t sure I could. But, I guess there’s a little something to the legend of Luke Skywalker after all,” he said. “Being dead certainly helped. I was just floored you would sacrifice that much power, much less offer it to me.”

“Um, you’re like, the one guy I trust with that typa thing,” I said, smiling back. 

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” he laughed. “Anyway, I have a couple of details to work out with you. Like if for some reason you can’t actually ask me to send you home, do you wanna go home if, say, something specific happens?”

“Is this a Jedi will and testament?” 

“I don’t know what that means, but sure.” 

“Ohmigod, you can access my world now. You should learn a few things about it!” I said, teasing him. 

“Maybe I will! But not right now,” he replied. “Seriously. Anything you wanna add to our little agreement?” 

“I guess just don’t let me die here if you can help it,” I said with a shrug. “If I’m dying, I wanna go back home. Is that selfish?” 

“Not really. I mean, you have a life to live there too, right?” 

“See, that’s what I was thinkin’. Maybe I’ll even learn a thing or two in this life before I go live that one.” I wagged a brow at him. He shook his head, fondly I think. “That’s about all I got right now, though.” 

“Alright, well. If you think of something you better let me know before I have to make the call myself.” He wagged a finger at me. “In the meantime, I hear you’re gonna go travel the galaxy like a hooligan?” 

“Absolutely,” I grinned back. His face was truly fond, now. He seemed happy for me. 

“Thank you, Aeon. For everything you did. I…” There were almost tears in his eyes. “I can’t repay you. Not really.” 

“Letting me live my life here and then go back home is absolutely repayment in kind,” I said. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s not every day someone like me gets to have space magic and travel a galaxy far, far away. It’s kind of a big deal to me.” I beamed, and I wanted to hug him. But can you actually hug a Force ghost? Kinda seems like maybe not.

“As long as you think so, that’s more than enough for me. I’m always gonna be here for you, kid. Even if you join the dark side,” he joked, trying to grin through his teary eyes. _ Great, now MY eyes are watering. _

“Gonna zap my mom into this galaxy to straighten me out if I go all rotten apple, huh?” 

“Yes.” He pretended to be stern with me. “You might think I’m joking, but I’m absolutely not.”

“Oh, I believe you,” I giggled.

“Catch ya later, kid,” he said, waving at me. 

“Bye, Uncle Luke,” I waved back. And he was gone in less than a puff of smoke. I stared at the empty chair. Matt was inside making us something to eat. Our plans were in place. The _ Falcon _was in the docking bay. And the past, whatever it amounted to, was about to die. Something new was gonna come up in its place, something exciting and Star-Wars-y and fucking awesome. I knew it in my bones. In that moment, I was alive with something. Too excited to be content, too peaceful to be excited. Full, maybe. Connected.

“Aeon! Lunch is ready!” called the beautiful blonde angel I’d fallen so madly in love with from the little kitchen inside. I smiled and gave another look out at the skyscape of Coruscant. 

“Coming!” I called, and rose from my chair to open the transparisteel door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LUKE IS BEST UNCLE T-T 
> 
> i have an epilogue to post, which will be the last chapter. i think y'all might like it. you'll have to let me know if i'm right!


	86. Chapter 86

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think they call this an epilogue?

I opened my eyes, heavy and slow just like every morning had been for so long. My body was getting tired, finally. When you’re old, ‘tired’ starts to mean something totally different than it used to, trust me. The aches and pains are a little bit there all the time.

Which is why, when I realized I wasn’t feeling any of those aches and pains, I got very confused. 

_ Have my nerves gone numb? Am I dying? Fucking finally. Even the Force doesn't stop you from getting old. _ I rubbed my eyes, blinking against the light coming in through the windows. The next thing that confused me was the conspicuous absence of a certain very lage, very warm body beside me in the bed. That was much less welcome than the first weird thing. I looked around for the high cheeks covered in sweet laugh lines and regal nose I loved so completely, but they weren’t there.

_ Has Janus gone out already? _ That was the name they finally chose for their system, the Janus system. Pretty, right? And so nice to be able to refer to all three of them regardless of who was out whenever one needed to. But the only body in the galaxy that had a harder time waking up than mine was the one inhabited by the three of them.  _ Also, where the fuck did these bed sheets come from? I don’t remember-- _

Suddenly I froze, and then sat bolt upright. A room that I hadn’t remembered or thought of in years was around me, white curtains on the windows, wooden furniture, a bookshelf, a desk. A guitar leaned up in the corner. Posters on the walls from bands and movies that jolted some part of me that felt deeply buried. 

_ Holy shit. Holy shit what the fuck is going on?? _ I looked down at my torso and saw a ripped up old t-shirt. Lifting my hands to my face, I stared in disbelief at the lack of wrinkles and worn skin covered in little sun-flecks. My heart started racing in my chest, and glanced around again. Was I dreaming? I pinched myself-- which felt like a stupid cliche, but it seems to be a real thing-- and nothing happened. Except I said ‘ow’ from the pinch, obviously. 

“What in the name of fuckin--” I yanked the comforter off of myself and went to the window to open the curtain. Outside was a sunny neighborhood, with lots of trees and yards and bushes and flower beds. It was midsummer, and there were kids running through a sprinkler on the lawn a few doors down. Their dog was not enjoying the water as much as they were. When I turned my head the other way, I saw a moving truck with two big guys hauling out a very futuristic-looking couch. 

“I feel like Dutch modern is a little played out, but whatever,” I grumbled to myself, shutting the curtain again. Then I blinked, and realized what I’d just said. 

“AEON!” called a voice from downstairs. 

“Mom?” I said quietly to myself in shock. 

“AEON! Get UP already! The new neighbors are finally moving in!” She was bustling around downstairs doing God knows what, not bothering to come up the stairs to harass me just yet. I walked towards my closed bedroom door, slowly opening it. The t-shirt and a pair of boxers were all I was wearing, but for some reason being here-- being… home?-- meant I wasn’t worried about it. 

“Mom?” I called again, louder this time. “What time is it?” 

“It’s noon! We gotta figure out lunch and welcome the new folks! I’m making a casserole!” 

“This is California, Mom, neighbors don’t make each other casseroles here!” I replied, rolling my eyes. Some part of me that was still in a galaxy far, far away was watching myself respond like the mid-twenties bipolar person I was a whole entire lifetime ago, still baffled and disoriented and starting to get a little upset. 

“ _ We _ do! Now get dressed and come help me!” she called back, and I could hear her taking stuff out of the fridge.

“Fine!” I replied, and walked out of the bedroom and into the little bathroom that was on the second floor of our house. When I opened the door and turned on the light, fear jumped into my throat. 

_ What the fuck am I about to see?  _

I approached the mirror slowly, heart pounding. When I saw myself in my mid-twenties, I clapped a hand over my mouth to not scream. For a moment I was too shocked to think anything, and I leaned back against the bathroom wall and stared at myself. Then, all the things I was upset about came back at once.

“Mattau?” I whispered to nobody. “Kylo? Ben?” 

But they weren’t here. I was here, no longer where I had just been for so long after Luke had spirited me away. A whole lifetime with the Janus system, roving the galaxy and pointedly trying to make it suck less instead of more, was still mulling around in my memories. Their faces flashed up vividly in my mind’s eye, and I felt tears sting my real eyes. 

I sank to the floor against the wall, burying my face in my hands. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here, couldn’t remember what had been happening the night before. Was I dying in that place? Had Luke brought me back here just like he’d promised? I was super over my memory problems when it came to overwhelming Force stuff. I stifled the sobs in my throat. I missed them terribly, acutely, horribly. The sense of grief was sudden and kinda awful. I breathed deep and slow, trying to stop my tears until I had more time to indulge them. Some habits never change. 

“AEON!” shouted my mother again from below. “Hurry up, you goon! You don’t have to look fancy!” 

“Just a minute!” I called back, voice only slightly wavering. I looked up at the white ceiling of the little bathroom, sniffling. “I didn’t mean to leave you like that. I’m sorry,” I whispered, even though of course they couldn’t hear me. “I hope whatever happened, it didn't hurt you too much. I love you three so much.” I blinked the tears away and tried to will myself to stand up and go about being the old me. The one who wasn’t Aeon Organa-Solo.

_ Wait, isn’t mom calling me Aeon? I still can’t fucking remember my old name. Why is she calling me that? _ Now I was on my feet, and shuffling back to my bedroom to look at the birth certificate on the wall. 

It didn’t say Aeon. I won’t bother to tell y’all my old name. It hardly mattered, because it certainly wasn’t who I was anymore. Was it?  _ Okay, now I’m not the old me AND I’m not Aeon Organa-Solo? Pick something and stick with it _ , my brain chided me.

**No one’s ever really gone,** came a faint voice. I glanced around with a start. 

“Hello?” I’m not supposed to talk to the voices, but sometimes they’re not just the literal voices in my head and frankly I hadn’t heard one in years no matter which timeline you went by. In fact, this one didn’t sound like a voice in my head. It sounded like… 

_ There’s no way that was Luke, _ I thought as I hurriedly yanked open a drawer in my chest and pulled out a pair of jeans and a clean tank top. Throwing them on hurriedly, I decided that my bedhead (which is epic if you have short hair, lemme tell ya) was going to have to be good enough for whoever the fuck was moving in and shuffled down the stairs. 

“There you are, sunshine,” Mom said as I entered. She was watching the oven like a hawk, and I wondered how the fuck she’d managed to whip something up that fast. 

“Mom, did you buy a frozen mac and cheese?” I asked, the smell of it deeply familiar and really fuckin’ delicious in my nose. 

“Shh. Don’t tell them. They don’t need to know it was frozen.” She winked conspiratorially at me. “Did you see them? Their furniture is so nice. I wonder if they moved here from far away, or just somewhere nicer like LA.” 

“I didn’t see any of them, just the moving guys.” 

“Oh, well they’re the  _ cutest  _ family,” Mom said, standing up from the oven to grab the mitts. 

“It’s not done yet, ma,” I assured her, but she opened the oven anyway of course.

“I’m just checking!” She tugged it out and then slid it back in. “You’re right. The cheese isn’t melted enough.” 

“Leave it alone,” I said for what felt like the billionth time. Boy, being back here sure did bring every single memory I had of Earth right back real fast. “It cooks slower with you opening the oven like that.”

“Their names are really funny,” she said, apparently not interested in my very solid cooking tips. “The dad, he’s kinda rough around the edges, but I think he’s just grouchy because everyone’s grouchy when they’re moving. His name is Han, which sounds like, Swedish or something.” 

“Um, what?” I asked, brow furrowing. “Did you say Han?” 

“Yeah, isn’t that weird?” 

“Han Solo?” 

“I thought you said you hadn’t met them yet?” she asked. 

“I haven’t…”  _ At least… I shouldn’t have… _

“How’d you know his last name? Actually, the last name is Organa-Solo. Hyphenated.” 

“What?” I blinked at her, frozen in place.

“Are you feeling okay, hun?” she asked, coming over to press her hand to my forehead. “You seem kinda out of it.” 

“I’m fine, Mom,” I grumbled, pulling away from her touch. “Did you say they had a kid? A son?” My heart was up in my throat. 

“Three kids, actually,” she replied. “They all look a little old to be still living with mom and dad, but then again I guess someone could say you are too, and we know that’s horse shit. They seem like they’re about your age, so I think they might be triplets!”  _ Wait, what the fuck is happening right now?  _

“Are they outside? Helping move?” 

“I dunno, I guess so. I haven’t spoken to them yet, just the dad. The mom is busy conducting the movers. She sounds like a cool lady. Maybe kinda scary, but I respect that in a mom. I think she’s in government or something.” 

“Can I take them the mac and cheese when it’s done?” I asked immediately, unwilling to think the words that were bubbling up just under the surface of my brain. Mom looked surprised, and raised an eyebrow at me. 

“Someone’s changed their tune awful quick,” she smirked. I was already over at the oven, turning on the light and staring at the cheese on top of the casserole. 

“It’s probably fine now, don’t you think?” I asked, grabbing a mitt. 

“Is the cheese bubbly?” 

“Sure.” Did I care? Fuck no I did not care. I opened the door and pulled the dish out-- it actually looked fine, maybe coulda been a little more browned on top but I was well past giving a fuck. “I can take it over there now, if you want.” 

“Well, I think their truck just drove off,” Mom said, leaning over the sink to peer sidelong out the windows in the direction of their house. It was literally next door to ours, which is why she was so gung-ho to make friends basically immediately. The last family who had lived there hadn’t been that into being friendly with neighbors and it drove her nuts. “So maybe…?”

“Okay cool.” I was already wrapping the top of it in tinfoil, gripping it by the handles on the sides with the mitts, striding with very much purpose through the kitchen and dining room to the living room. Just as I approached the front door, the doorbell rang. I halted suddenly, surprised. 

“Just a moment!” Mom called from the kitchen as she hurried behind and around me to get to the door. The old wooden thing creaked and swung open…

A very tall,  _ very  _ well-built young man was standing there on the porch, holding a bottle of wine like he didn’t know what to do with it. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but no shoes. His hair was longish and nearly black, tousled and messy. But it was his face that, for a brief moment, made time stop. 

“Uh, hey, um, Ms. King?” he said in a deep, gut-wrenchingly familiar voice, looking at my mom.

“Yes, that’s me, you can just call me Dorothy,” she replied, smiling in her ever-so-mom-like way. But I was staring, looking at pillowy lips beneath a prominent nose and a pair of smoldering brown eyes with a stern brow. Except he looked less stern, more youthful and maybe a little uncertain. Mom’s response seemed to calm him, though.

“Oh okay, I’m Ben,” he said, smiling awkwardly back at her. My heart was trying to escape my chest, my face starting to get hot.  _ Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit-- _

“Hi Ben!” Well, my mom was happy. But then she turned and, to my mild mortification, gestured to where I stood half-behind her holding the casserole like an idiot. “This is my offspring, Aeon. Who is non-binary and uses they-them pronouns. See honey, I can tell people for you, it’s no big deal,” she added to me. 

“That’s a cool name,” Ben said, turning those eyes onto me. No flash of recognition, nothing but a bashful hint of a smile. He seemed to be getting less nervous, whereas I was suddenly MUCH more so despite my mom’s attempt to be helpful about my gender. 

“I, uh, hey,” I stammered, swallowing hard. “I’m-- this is for you.” I held out the casserole, stepping into to the doorway past my mom. 

“Oh!” He reached out as if to take it only to realize that there was still a bottle of wine in his hands. “Shit, um, well this is for you,” he added, and held it out like he wasn’t sure what to do. I guess the casserole wasn’t as weird as I thought, even though it was homely compared to offering a nice vintage to your new neighbors. My mom reached out to grab the bottle, thank fuck, and his big hands came down around the mitts. Around mine. I stared at them, then back at him.  _ Fuck, I’m blushing SO hard right now! _

“Um, well, I guess you need the mitts…” I began.

“Shit, sorry,” he murmured, pulling his hands away suddenly. He was blushing now, too. “I... didn’t think about that.” 

“It’s pretty hot,” Mom chimed in. “Why don’t you come in, Ben?” 

“Actually,” I interjected, stepping a little past the doorway. “I can carry it over to your place, if you want. It’s to welcome your family to the neighborhood.” I was still talking to him, of course. 

“Oh, that’s really, you don’t have to--”

“I’d like to.” I smiled at him, a strange smile that took a moment to get past the shock on my face. For the record, I never developed a romantic relationship with Ben. Not in sixty-some years. He was always like my best friend, or sometimes like a baby cousin maybe. Not like a son, that was too weird. His teenage crush had passed by and he’d always been shy, even with me. He came out less frequently than his alters, but when he did he always knew what he wanted to do and I always obliged him. We’d had heart-to-hearts now and then, and he’d shown up to save my ass one or two times (never again by stabbing it, though.) For some reason, the attraction I felt to him now didn’t feel new. It felt like a long-buried crush rising up from the dead. Maybe this was just due to how much he looked like Kylo, I wasn’t sure. It was like I could now get to know him all over again, more than I ever had before.

“Just a warning, you have to meet my siblings if you do that,” he said, grinning and blushing even deeper. 

“That’s fine.”  _ No, really. It’s extremely fine. _ I shuffled out the door, also barefoot and also not bothered by it. Fuck shoes when it’s this nice outside. “You can always tell me about them. Like a fair warning.”

“Um, my brother Kylo is, like, I dunno. He’s going to acting school so he thinks he’s hot shit. My sister Mattie, she’s trans. Which I wouldn’t normally just tell you, but since you’re non-binary she’s gonna be excited to meet you. She’s really smart and right now she wants to go into programming.” 

“Oh really? That’s very interesting,” I replied.  _ Very, very interesting! I like that Mattau didn't really change her name, that’s pretty cool.  _ We were walking along my porch, and I was paying so much rapt attention to him that I almost tripped over the first stair down to the lawn. 

“Oops!” He reached out a strong arm to catch me before I could tumble headfirst with a hot casserole in my hands down the steps, and my breath was driven from my lungs by how strong he was. “Careful, Aeon.” 

“Sorry,” I murmured, blushing again like a fool. “I’m just a klutz sometimes. Um, so what do you do, Ben?”

“Me? Oh, I’m going to school on a swimming scholarship,” he said. 

“I didn’t even know they gave swimming scholarships.” 

“They do here,” he laughed. His laugh was so sweet and endearing, and so goddamn familiar, I wanted to faint. “I’m about to start my senior year. So I’ll be done soon, and I dunno what the fuck I’m gonna do with my life after that.” 

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with mine right now, so you’re ahead of me by a year, at least,” I told him with a nervous chuckle. I was not a Force-wielding badass anymore. At least, not that I was aware of. So, my life seemed less than impressive. I wasn’t even back at school yet, had no idea what I wanted to do except not be too bipolar to do anything. 

“Well hey, maybe we can swap ideas since we’re neighbors now,” he said, rubbing the back of his head and smiling. I felt my stomach do a flip. “Then by the next year maybe one of us will figure it out. Probably you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” We were approaching his front porch, which was smaller than mine and conspicuously empty of lounge furniture for now. I saw a blonde head lean out of one of the giant windows on the front of the house. 

“Ben! Tell mom and dad we need to just order pizza for lunch, please! They fuckin’ listen to you!” I almost froze on the spot. That was Mattau alright, just as breathtaking as before. Just, yanno, wearing a magenta tank top, and with much softer skin and a softer body like she had been on estrogen for a few years--

“Hey Mattie, this is Aeon, they’re our neighbor now. We’re gonna figure out what to do with our lives,” Ben replied. “They also made us a casserole, so. Maybe that can be lunch.” 

“Oh, hi Aeon!” she said to me with a smile. The same sweet, goofy smile I knew so well. I wanted to melt into the porch. She was  _ sooo  _ cute, and so much more confident now. “Thanks for-- what is it? It smells like cheese.”

“It’s macaroni and cheese,” I said with a nod, eyes fixed on her. 

“Yes! Ohmigod, I hoped so! And you use ‘they’ pronouns? I already love you! But we still have to order something Kylo will eat. Come in!” And her blonde head vanished inside the window. Ben shuffled up to the front door and opened it for me. 

“Kylo’s refusing to eat dairy right now. For his voice, or some shit,” he informed me, rolling his eyes. 

“Wow. Actors, huh?” I wondered if I actually sounded as chill as I was trying to, walking through the threshold. The living room had that fancy modern furniture in it, but it was all akimbo and definitely not in its final resting place yet. There were boxes stacked everywhere. I saw Mattie vanishing around the corner, to an open-concept den, dining room, and kitchen area. 

“MOM! OUR NEIGHBOR IS REALLY COOL AND BROUGHT MAC AND CHEESE!” she shouted. Ben gestured after her, smiling a smile that said  _ this is how my family is, hope you’re ready… _

“I’m right here, hun, you don’t have to yell,” came a raspy voice. The woman who rounded the corner with her tall daughter hanging on her arm was a dead ringer for Carrie if there ever was one. “Mac and cheese, huh? That’s so sweet of you, dear. Just put it on the counter, please, and I promise someone will eat it. Probably in very short order.” She smiled at me, and I stood as if in a trance. After a weird pause I only half realized was my fault, Ben came around me and put his hands on my mitted ones again. 

“Here, let me,” he said, and I turned pink as he pinched the ends of the mitts so he could hold the casserole and I could slide my hands out. 

“Oh, uh, thanks,” I stammered. “Uh, hi, Ms. Solo--” 

“Organa-Solo, but you can call me Leia, dear. I only make other senators call me by my last name.” She winked at me. I wanted to leap through the roof with joy.

“Mom, this is Aeon from next door, they’re gonna help me figure my life out. Isn’t that great news?” Ben joked. He looked at me a little sheepishly, almost apologizing for using that joke again. 

“Very good news,” Leia replied, chuckling. “You must be a miracle worker. Maybe your mac and cheese will convince my other son to eat dairy again.” 

“Dairy,” came another deep, familiar voice along with some heavy footsteps from the stairwell around the corner, “is terrible for your vocal chords, mother.”

He rounded the corner in all black, a black tee and black sweats and black socks and black hair and black eyes and that face, oh that face. My eyes must have been huge. 

“Well this is  _ gift  _ dairy, Kylo, and I’m sure your vocal chords will forgive you this one time,” Leia replied, glaring at little pointedly at him. His eyes flitted down to the casserole dish, and then up at me. They burned, just like they always did. His frown was stern and broody, just like it had always been. He had the air of someone who didn’t really want to be where he was, which I associated with him when I’d first arrived on his ship-- and occasionally that persona came back when he was deeply uncomfortable. Here, maybe it was still in place most of the time. I swallowed again. 

“Yeah, Kylo, be nice to our new neighbor,” Mattie chided him, leaning against the sink and crossing her arms. “They brought us a dish. That’s so cute and old-fashioned and really nice, actually.” 

“I took the wine, by the way, mom,” said Ben from beside me. “The lady’s name is Dorothy, and she was really nice, too.” 

“Yeah, that’s my mom,” I said finally, voice almost breaking. “She’s gonna be really happy y’all wanna be friends. The people before you didn’t, and I think it kinda upset her.” 

“I mean, it’s their house,” Kylo interjected. “They don’t  _ have  _ to be friends with anybody.” 

“Shut up, Kylo, you’re such a buzzkill,” Mattie said, rolling her eyes. “What my stuck-up brother meant to say was, we’re excited to be your friends too, Aeon.” 

“Exactly,” Leia added, frowning at Kylo. “Be nice.” 

“I didn’t say we didn’t want to be friends, I just said the old people didn’t. You take everything the wrong way,” he replied, crossing his arms and sulking a little.  _ Oh my God he’s JUST THE SAME!! _ I almost laughed.

“That’s about the best you’re gonna get from him right now, probably,” Ben murmured to me, shrugging. 

“It’s okay, not everybody warms up to new people fast, I get it.”  _ Boy oh boy, do I get it. Especially with him. _ “Thanks, y’all.” I pretended not to see Kylo eyeing me like he was surprised I wasn’t upset, but trying not to show it. Classic him, really. 

“Your father is on the way home from Lowe’s, by the way, so I suggest you ask him about more food since this lovely casserole might not feed all of my hungry children,” Leia said. I heard the front door open even as she spoke, and footsteps approaching behind me. 

“What casserole?” came a gravelly voice. I turned and saw  _ Han fucking Solo _ walking in with two plastic bags full of shit from the hardware store, and blinked rapidly. Mattie and Ben clambered to explain, Kylo grumbled something about how he still didn’t think dairy was a good idea for him, Leia said something about moving and keeping it simple, and I just stood there taking in the scene. 

_ This is it. This is real. This is really happening. My life is a triplet AU right now. Holy fuck.  _

“Settle down, settle down!” Han said, gesturing with his hands as he put the bags on the floor. Then he turned to me. “What’d you say your name was, kid?” 

“Aeon,” I replied, holding out my hand. Half a little smirk came over his face, and he reached out to shake it. 

“Nice name. I’m Han. You wanna have lunch with us, since you’ve already been indoctrinated?” Now the smirk was a little more full and mischievous.

“Uh, sure, that’d be great!” I replied, feeling a smile of my own break out over my face. 

“Alright, well, pick a side because you’re gonna have to take your preferences to court before whoever wins goes to get the food,” he warned me playfully before entering the kitchen fully and leaning on the counter, taking a whiff of the mac and cheese. I just stood there and watched them all start arguing over the best meal idea, the big dumb grin still on my face. I looked up at the ceiling, and felt the ghost of an Ahch-To breeze on my cheek. 

**Have fun, kid. **

“Thanks, Uncle Luke,” I murmured. 

“Hey Aeon, do you like pizza or Chinese takeout better?” Ben asked, breaking my reverie. I looked at him, returning to the present, still smiling. He was smiling too, like he’d figured out the way to get everyone to agree on something to eat was by asking the guest their preference. And maybe like he really wanted to know the answer. Like maybe he wanted to know  _ me. _ I felt weightless, exhilarated. All the grief I had felt before was gone, blown away by their presence here. The whole Organa-Solo family, together again.

“I could really go for either, but there’s a great Chinese place that’s only like ten minutes away…” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .... :3
> 
> Y'ALL I JUST HAVE TO SAY THAT YOU LOT MADE THIS WHOLE FIC SUCH AN AMAZING PROCESS. i have NEVER completed a fic this long before EVER and frankly i am still shocked i managed but i know it's because y'all were so cool and kind and honest about what you read, so invested in my babies, so enthusiastic and so willing to stick with this fuckin ride till the bitter end T-T
> 
> every single comment made my day. i did not expect this outpouring of support at all. thank you to everyone who got into this, whether you have bipolar or some other stigmatized brain thing or not. whether you're trans or queer or not. whether you commented or not. every kudo and comment and bookmark and shit even just a view.... thank you. so much. this is the most fun i've have writing in a long time. i'm not crying, YOU'RE crying....
> 
> lemme know how you like this epilogue ;)
> 
> I LOVE Y'ALL TO BITS <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685115) by [BekahAnais](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BekahAnais/pseuds/BekahAnais)


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